


Hanna

by Zaffie



Series: The Fateful Janitor's Closet [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: And Hanna Is Medium Old Now, And Maybe A Robot, And Minor Violence, And Skye And Ward Have Been Together For Ages, Because Of Reasons That I Cannot Reveal, But Stuff Is Getting Complicated, F/M, Gen, So Four Years Have Passed, Some Adorable Fluff, There Is Also An Octoseal, There Might Be Emotional Distress, This Is The Fourth In A Series Okay, and cupcakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1744520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaffie/pseuds/Zaffie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well, I did promise fluff. xD Now that one's been fulfilled...</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. The Very Special Day

Hanna wakes up and straight away, she knows that this will be a Very Special Day. She’s spent the whole night in her own bed, and she’s wearing her sparkly pyjamas, and her ugg boots are right there by her bed, right where she left them, so everything is good.

     She slides out from under the covers and sits on the floor to put on her boots. Right foot, left foot. Done! She jumps to her feet and her boots make a happy thud on the floor, and then she opens her bedroom door and tiptoes out into the corridor.

     The fifth floor is empty, and a quick peek over the balcony tells Hanna that everywhere else is deserted too, so she makes her way around to Aunty Jemma’s room. She opens the door very slowly, in case it creaks, and then she walks in and whispers, “Hello?”

     The person in the bed gives a bleary sort of mumble, so Hanna walks over and climbs up onto the mattress. Aunty Jemma is curled beneath the covers, which are pulled right up to her ears, and her eyes are still closed.

     “Wake up,” Hanna says loudly, “because it’s morning!”

     Slowly, the woman opens her eyes. “Hanna,” she murmurs.

     “It’s a Very Special Day,” Hanna announces. “Do you know why?”

     Aunty Jemma says, “What time is it?”

     Hanna doesn’t know, so she shrugs and bounces a little bit on the bed just because she can. “Guess why it’s a Very Special Day.”

     “I d-don’t know,” Aunty Jemma answers, interrupted halfway through by a tremendous yawn. “Do you want breakfast?”

     “Yes,” Hanna says decisively, because her tummy is rumbly. “Pancakes.”

     Aunty Jemma sits up, runs a hand through her hair, yawns again and then finally _finally_ gets out of bed. Hanna follows her out of the room and into the fifth-floor kitchen, which they combined with the lounge room last year by knocking out a wall. Hanna remembers, because she was there, and she got plaster dust all over her hair and Mummy said she was _filthy_.

     When the pancakes are nearly ready (and Aunty Jemma has let Hanna sit up on the counter, which is very good), Trip comes in. Hanna beckons him over, and says, “Do _you_ know why it’s a Very Special Day, Trip?”

     “Um,” Trip says. He glances over to Aunty Jemma. “Because there are pancakes for breakfast?”

     “No,” Hanna tells him scornfully. “It was a Very Special Day _before_ the pancakes.” She holds out her arms and regally says, “Please lift me down.”

     Trip hoists her up and lowers her to the floor and she runs over to kneel on the back of the sofa, where she waits for Fitz, because _he’ll_ know why it’s a Very Special Day.

     He comes in a few minutes later, sniffs the air and says, “Pancakes!” with enthusiasm. Then he spots Hanna. “Hello, monkey,” he smiles.

     “It’s a Very Special Day,” Hanna says without preamble.

     Fitz nods. “Yes, because your Mummy and Daddy are coming home today, aren’t they?”

     She _knew_ that Uncle Fitz would get it. “I love you, Uncle Fitz,” she says, and holds out her arms for a hug.

     “I love you too, monkey,” he says, looking pleasantly surprised. He picks her up and hugs her hard, just the way she likes it, and then carries her over into the kitchen. “Tell me what you want on your pancake.”

     After breakfast, Aunty Jemma says Hanna needs to get dressed. She doesn’t want to get dressed, because her pyjamas are so sparkly and they have a unicorn on the front, but Aunty Jemma makes her strictest face, so Hanna has to go.

     She chooses her purple checked shirt with the buttons and her white leggings and her underpants with the stars on the sides. Pants and leggings are easy – she sits on the edge of her bed to put her feet through the holes, right foot, left foot, and then she stands up to jump the leggings up her legs. The purple shirt is easy too, but not the buttons. Hanna puts her arms through the sleeves and then she goes outside for help.

     Trip is walking past, so Hanna waves her arms at him, the sleeves of the shirt falling past her hands, and says, “Help!”

     He smiles and crouches in front of her to do up her buttons. “Do you want to come down to the gym with me?”

     Hanna considers it, her head tipped to one side, and then she says, “Yes, please.” She turns around and finds her purple Converse with the glitter and the sparkles standing outside the door and hands them to Trip. “Please will you tie up my laces?”

     “Absolutely.” He slides the shoes on, right foot, left foot, and then he tugs the laces tight, just how Hanna likes them, and ties them up into two neat bows.

     “Will you carry me down?” she asks.

     “You know you’re supposed to do it by yourself,” Trip says. He glances left and right, to check that no one is listening, and then he says, “Oh, all right then, come on.”

     Hanna holds on tightly around his neck while he goes down the ropes hand-over-hand, only she’s careful not to strangle him because Mummy says that if you strangle people, they will fall all the way down to the bottom and then go splat.

     They go to the gym on the third floor, which has all the soft mats set out for falling on. Hanna can do somersaults and handstands on those mats. Trip puts her down and goes to strap his hands, which means he’s doing punching. Hanna skips over to him and holds out her hands, too. He straps hers after he has finished with his own, and then they both go and stand by the punching bag.

     “I’ll hold first,” Hanna says, and she puts her strapped hands on either side of the bag and braces her feet in their sparkly purple shoes on the ground. She leans into the bag, holding it with her shoulder, the way Daddy taught her, and hears the ‘smack-smack-smack’ as Trip starts to hit it on the other side. One time, Trip hit too hard and Hanna went flying all the way to the other side of the room. Daddy was really angry with Trip, but Mummy checked Hanna’s head for all the bumps and bruises and then she just laughed. Mummy is funny, but Daddy is serious.

     “Swap with me,” Trip says, so Hanna moves around to stand on the mats and Trip braces his feet on the bare floor and holds the bag for her. She punches like Daddy taught her, too, fast jabs and occasional big swinging roundhouse punches. “Move your feet,” Trip reminds her, and so Hanna shuffles them a little bit, shifting her weight from one foot to the other because Daddy always says you need to stay loose.

     Later, Trip does some weights and Hanna plays with the exercise ball, and then she gets bored and tells him she’ll go and find Aunty Jemma. Trip makes her promise to be careful and climb the ladders, not the ropes, but then he lets her go.

     Hanna clings tight to the rope ladder and climbs it one rung at a time, to get to the fourth floor, and then up again, to the fifth, where she thinks she might find company. She pushes open the door to Aunty Jemma’s bedroom, but it’s only Fitz in there.

     “Hallo, Hanna,” he says cheerfully. Hanna likes Fitz’s voice, because it sounds like he’s singing even when he’s just saying hello. Sometimes, she practices speaking like Fitz or Aunty Jemma, which always makes Daddy very happy.

     “Have you seen Aunty Jemma?” she asks.

     Fitz says, “She went to have a shower.”

     “So why are you in here?”

     He makes a guilty face. “Can you keep a secret?”

     “’Course,” Hanna says indignantly. “Tell me.”

     Fitz pulls something small and brightly wrapped from behind his back. “I was going to hide a present in here for her.”

     Hanna frowns. “Why? It’s not her birthday and it’s not Christmas.”

     “Well, no,” Fitz says, “just as a general present… you know, to let her know I think of her.”

     “That seems a bit silly,” Hanna says, and she props her hands on her hips. “Hide it in her sock drawer. That’s where my Daddy hides things.”

     “What things?” Fitz asks absently, but he doesn’t really seem to want to know, because he keeps talking straight away, saying, “Ah, well, maybe I could put it there… I don’t want to seem like I’ve been prying though…”

     Hanna leaves him to it, because he’s never sensible after he starts muttering to himself, and she goes back out onto the landing.

     The door from the hangar crashes open, and Hanna jumps forward, standing up on the railings to hang over the edge of the balcony and stare down. Billy comes in first, and he doesn’t like her to call him Billy, but she finds his other name tricky to remember (Kernig, or Koonig maybe) and then right behind Billy is AC, which stands for air-conditioning but also Awesome Coulson, that’s what Mummy said. May is next, but Hanna doesn’t pay any attention to her – she’s waiting… waiting…

     Mummy and Daddy walk through the door almost at the same time. They look tired, and Daddy has mud on his face, and Mummy has mud on her blue checked shirt with the buttons, like Hanna’s but bigger, but they are _here_.

     She squeals, “Mummy! Daddy!” and they both look up to see her and their faces break into exhausted smiles. Hanna jumps away from the balcony and runs around the edge of the landing to the slide. She climbs in and sticks her legs out straight and pushes off with her hands, yelling with laughter the whole way down to the bottom because she’s just so happy that they’re back.

     Her parents are waiting for her at the bottom of the slide, and Mummy lunges forward and catches her under her armpits, swinging Hanna up and into Mummy’s arms. Daddy steps closer and palms the back of Hanna’s head with his big, warm hand.

     “Hi, Mummy,” Hanna says, smiling right into her mother’s face. She turns and adds, “Hi, Daddy.”

     “Hi, baby,” Mummy murmurs. “We’re really glad to be home.”

     Hanna sinks her face into Mummy’s shoulder and wraps her legs tight around Mummy’s waist. “Did you miss me?”

     “All week,” Daddy says seriously. “We never stopped thinking about you the whole time.”

     “Me neither,” Hanna says quickly, not to be outdone. “I even thought about you when I was _sleeping_.” Mummy laughs, and Hanna remembers she has another question to ask. “How was the mission? Did you win?”

     Mummy and Daddy look at each other, a quick look, and then Mummy opens her mouth to say something but she’s interrupted by a crash and a splash which is Tessie climbing out of the swimming pool and galloping over to see them. Hanna wriggles so that Mummy will put her down, and then she watches Mummy and Daddy say hi to Tessie and she kneels to let Tessie give her whiskery kisses all over her face, which make her laugh.

     “Let’s go upstairs,” Mummy says. She yawns loudly. “We’re hungry.”

     Hanna holds onto both their hands as they walk over to the rope ladder, and, when they reach it, both of her parents lift her at once so that she starts climbing before them.

     “Go on, then,” Daddy says, when she pauses to glance back down at them. “We’re right behind you.”


	2. Soap Suds

Ward stares across the table at his daughter and still can’t believe she’s really there. Sometimes he has trouble adjusting – flaking out is what Skye calls it. It’s almost as if the person Ward was and the person he is are clashing, both struggling to bring their memories to the surface. Right now, Ward is remembering how it all was at the start, how awful he felt, sick inside, and he can’t believe that he’s here now.

     Hanna’s dark hair curls loosely around her face, and her eyes are bright and sparkle, showing everything she’s thinking and feeling. She looks like Skye – she has Skye’s nose and smile, but there’s something of Ward lurking around the corners of her mouth. Already, too, Hanna is tall for her age – her arms and legs are long and skinny.

     “Pass the potatoes, Daddy,” she says sternly, and Ward gets the sense that this is not the first time she’s asked him while he’s been lost in thought.

     “Forgot the magic word,” Skye mumbles with her mouth full.

     Hanna lifts her chin. “ _Please_ ,” she enunciates clearly, and Ward smiles and hands her the dish of potatoes, which she takes carefully with both hands.

     May and Coulson have left to discuss the mission, and Ward almost wishes he could be with them, but May stopped him at the office door and told him in no uncertain terms to go and be with his family. Fitzsimmons and Trip are clustered around the table now with him and Skye, and even though Ward can tell from the hard, burning curiosity in their faces that they all want to ask for information, no one says anything in front of Hanna. Instead they chatter lightly and easily, pass food and tell jokes.

     Eventually, when dinner is over, Fitz and Skye clear away and Ward goes with them. Skye glances over at him with those eyes that seem to know everything – the same eyes as his daughter, actually.

     “You want to talk to May and Coulson, don’t you?” she asks. “I don’t see that rehashing the issue will help us uncover any more information, Ward.”

     She must be just as shaken up as he is, if not more, but she’s not showing it at all. “It’s Hydra,” Ward hisses, and he sees Fitz’s head snap around, but the engineer is wise enough not to speak. “You know how I feel about Hydra, Skye.”

     “Raina isn’t Hydra,” Skye says coolly. “She’s had her own agenda from Day One.”

     “I just… I’m not ready to stop thinking about it,” Ward admits.

     She shrugs. “Do what you need to, then. _I’m_ going to give Hanna a bath.”

***

Coulson’s office is packed full when Ward walks in. Even Koenig is in there, squashed near the back. It’s not exactly the largest room on the fifth floor – in fact, Ward has a sneaking suspicion that it used to be a broom closet before Coulson transformed it – so it’s not particularly comfortable with seven fully grown adults tucked inside.

     “The mission went poorly,” Coulson starts, “to say the least. I could use words that are much worse.”

     “Complete fiasco,” May supplies bluntly.

     “Well, yes,” Coulson admits, “something along those lines.”

     Trip’s looking a little bit frustrated, and honestly Ward can’t blame the guy. “Sir, with respect,” Trip starts, “can you just tell us what happened?”

     “Yes,” Simmons chimes in quickly, “did you find Garrett?”

     “Oh, we found him all right,” Coulson says grimly. “What was left of him, anyway.”

     “What was… left?” Fitz frowns, puzzling over the sentence.

     “He was sort of in pieces,” Ward mutters.

     Fitz and Trip both wince, but Simmons says eagerly, “Pieces? How many pieces?”

     “That’s not important,” Coulson tells them. “The point is that Garrett is no longer our main threat.”

     “It was a lot of pieces,” Ward tells Simmons quietly, because she’s looking crestfallen.

     “What we didn’t expect to find, though, was Raina,” Coulson continues. “She was there – and she had an absolute army at her disposal. We barely got out with our lives.”

     “Army of what, sir?” Fitz asks. “Super-soldiers?”

     “No, don’t be silly, Fitz,” Simmons says immediately, “she can’t perfect the serum, she will have given up by now – isn’t that right, sir?”

     “They weren’t super-soldiers.”

     “What were they, then?” Trip asks. He gestures to May and Ward. “They must have been something special to take out these two plus Skye – and you, of course, sir.”

     “Whatever they were,” May says quietly, “they weren’t human.”

     “Not entirely human, at least,” Coulson agrees. “Think of it this way. You all remember the mass Fridge breakout, of course...” there are murmurs of assent, although Ward thinks that he _doesn’t_ remember, not really, “well some of the equipment in mass production at the Fridge was used for manufacturing-”

     He’s interrupted by a giggle and a shriek, and a very wet and naked Hanna pelts into the room, shampoo dripping from her hair, eyes bright with laughter. She grabs onto Ward’s trouser leg and skids to a stop, hiding behind him.

     “Hide me, Daddy!” she yells, and peeks out around his waist.

     Ward waits for the inevitable.

     Barely three seconds later, Skye follows her daughter’s rapid progress into the room. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail from which wispy strands are escaping and clinging to her face and neck; she has to use her wrist to wipe the hair away, because her hands are covered in shampoo. Her eyelashes are clumped together with water but her eyes shine in just the same way as Hanna’s.

     “Get back here, you little monster,” she exclaims, and Hanna squeals with a combination of joy and terror – or joy at her terror.

     Skye approaches Ward in a crouch. The sleeves of her plaid shirt are rolled up, and several buttons are undone. Ward can see straight down her shirt, which he tries not to notice. With a lunge, Skye reaches around Ward’s leg and grabs hold of Hanna’s small, slippery arm. “Gotcha!”

     Hanna screams, high-pitched with pure glee, and several occupants of the room cover their ears. Skye hoists Hanna up with both arms wrapped around the squirming body, water from Hanna getting on Skye’s face, her hair, her shirt. Skye doesn’t even notice. She has eyes for no one but Hanna.

     Ward can’t help but love her more in this moment, when she doesn’t care what she looks like, or how her soaking wet shirt is plastered to her skin. Her eyes and Hanna’s eyes are locked together, and the bond between them is almost palpable in the charged atmosphere of the room.

     Eventually, puffing out a breath which sends hair flying away from her face, Skye looks up. “Sorry, guys,” she says. “Sorry, AC.”

     “Sorry, Air-Conditioning!” Hanna hollers, and then she laughs in a hysterical way which makes Ward very aware of how long it is going to take to put her to bed tonight.

     Hanna kicks her legs exuberantly as Skye carts her from the room, and suddenly Ward doesn’t want to be in here anymore. He doesn’t want to stand in this tiny office and see the looks on the faces of his team as they hear about what Hydra is doing through Raina – or, rather, what Raina is doing through Hydra. He just wants to be with Skye. He wants to be with Hanna.

     “Sir,” he says softly, facing Coulson, “I think I might go and help her, if that’s okay.”

     “By all means,” Coulson says immediately. “Go.”

     Ward looks to May, and she gives him a heavy-lidded glare which he interprets to mean that he’s making the right decision. He jogs lightly out of the room before he can change his mind.  

***

Skye is straddling the edge of the bath, one leg in the water with her jeans rolled up to the knee, the other propped on the tiles outside. She’s leaning over, with one hand plastered over Hanna’s forehead, making a wall to try and stop water going into the child’s eyes. With the other hand, she lifts a jug of water and warns, “Keep your head back,” as she tips it over Hanna’s hair.

     Hanna doesn’t keep her head back, and soapy water pours in a stream across Skye’s hand and into Hanna’s face. She splutters, and scrunches her eyes up tightly, and says, “Towel, please, Mummy!” in the sort of tightly urgent voice that means she’s struggling to restrain a furious yell.

     Skye turns and reaches for the towel, but Ward gets there faster, pulling it off the rack and handing it to Hanna. He has a moment to absorb the rush of pleasure that spreads over Skye’s face as she sees him there before she turns back to her child.

     “Daddy?” Hanna asks, wiping the water from her eyes and opening them. She hands the towel back to him. “Are you coming to watch my bath?”

     “Yeah,” Ward says. “Sure.” He grabs the unsteady plastic stool from the corner of the room, drags it to be close to the bath and sits heavily. The stool creaks ominously.

     “Close your eyes,” Skye warns Hanna again, and she rinses again. “Are they done talking?” she asks Ward in the same tone of voice, nothing changing that would alert Hanna to the thick emotions behind the question.

     “Not yet,” Ward answers. “I just wanted to come and see how the bath was going.” He keeps his voice light, but he stares at Skye with all the love and appreciation that he can muster, trying to let her see how he feels.

     She purses her lips, trying to look disapproving, but he can see a smile trying to break through in her eyes. “Pass me the conditioner, then, make yourself useful.”

     There are three bottles of conditioner in the shower. “Um,” Ward says, looking at them uncertainly, “which one?”

     “The blue one!” Hanna chimes.

     “Not the tea tree, that’s Jemma’s,” Skye adds quickly.

     Ward picks up the blue bottle of conditioner, which he notices now is a special kids brand anyway, uncaps it and squeezes some into Skye’s hand. He _does_ want to help her, and he knows that he hurt her earlier, with his rejection – choosing the meeting over the bath.

     She looks at him and says, “Thanks,” and he sees her face soften. He’s forgiven. It’s as easy as that, and the knot of worry in his chest loosens and eases and then vanishes completely when Skye adds, “I love you, stupidhead.”

     “Language,” Ward warns instantly.

     Hanna peers slyly up at the both of them through a haze of water, and Ward knows that she heard, the little mischief. She doesn’t say anything yet, but he knows that ‘stupidhead’ will be making it into her daily vocabulary very shortly.


	3. Pillow Talk

Skye is absolutely knackered. The mission was exhausting – they’d barely had time to sleep, and when they had slept, it was all squashed together in a single room in an ancient shack that was leaning alarmingly to the left. Not the most restful of environments.

     Still, she’s a mother now, which has got to give her _some_ kind of extra magical powers, because she’s seen the things that mothers do. Somehow, Skye musters up the strength and the energy to hoist Hanna out of the bath, towel her daughter dry and dress her in the pyjamas that Ward fetches for them. She eases a brush gently through the knotty tangles in Hanna’s hair, and lets Hanna chatter away, replying occasionally, when a reply seems necessary. She heaves Hanna up to sit on the counter and helps her daughter to brush her teeth, and then she guides her silly, giggling, girl into her bedroom.

     Ward has remade the bed, because it’s probably been about a week since the sheets were last changed. Skye shepherds Hanna into the room as the girl starts to jump up and down on the spot with probably _far_ more excitement than bedtime demands.

     “All right, poppet, in you hop,” Skye says.

     “Hop!” Hanna proclaims proudly, and she hops over to the bed, first on one leg, then on the other.

     She stops before she reaches the bed and begins an arduous process of trying to hop onto the mattress, which is a very obvious delaying tactic. Fortunately, Ward is on hand to wrangle her down into the bed. He pulls the covers over on top of her and then tucks them into the sides of the mattress around her, to make a little cocoon. Hanna loves to be held tightly – by arms or blankets, it doesn’t matter – and they discovered early on that this was an easy way to soothe her into sleep.

   When she’s beneath the covers Ward lies down beside her and puts his hand on her back, pushing hard, because it’s the deep pressure that relaxes Hanna enough to sleep. They can’t stay with her forever, though, and Skye is already swaying on her feet, so finally both of them drop kisses on their daughter’s forehead and leave the room.

     Outside, Ward catches Skye in his arms. She’s grateful, because he’s helping to hold her up. She presses a kiss to his lips.

     “I know we’ve been living in a shack with no privacy for the past week,” Skye mumbles, “but I’m too exhausted to do anything fun tonight.”

     Ward huffs out a little laugh that tickles against Skye’s neck. “Me too,” he chuckles. “Let’s just sleep.”

     “God, yes,” Skye groans. “Sleep sounds so _good_.”

     After that they’re silent for a little while, waiting outside Hanna’s door. Skye turns in Ward’s arms so that her back is pressed against his chest. He slings his arms down over her shoulders, like a seatbelt, and she holds onto his elbows.

     After about ten minutes, Hanna opens her bedroom door. When she sees them standing outside and waiting for her, she gives a high-pitched, giggling squeal and rushes back into her room to jump on her bed and bury her face in the pillow.

     Without a word to each other, Skye and Ward both walk back into the room to coax their tiny whirlwind of a child back into bed.

***

They put Hanna back to bed together once more, without saying a word to her, trying not to increase her excitement, and then Ward suggests that Skye go and get ready for bed herself. He puts Hanna back into bed three times before Skye returns, and then he leaves.

     Skye only has to put Hanna back twice, and the sight of her mother also in pyjamas seems to calm the little girl down a bit. After leaving for the second time and waiting nearly twenty minutes (Ward returns halfway through and waits with her) Skye peeks silently into the room and sees Hanna’s eyes closed, and her little mouth slack with sleep.

     “Out like a light,” she hisses to Ward, closing the door again. “Please let’s go and sleep.”

     The trouble is, by the time they reach their bed, Skye has moved past the point of exhaustion into the kind of sheer overtired feeling that means she’s actually alert and awake again.

     “I’ll tell you a story,” Ward says when she complains that she can’t sleep. “Like I do for Hanna.”

     “You always tell Hanna the _same_ story.”

     “Well I never said I was creative, did I? It’s a good story!”

     “Yes, but I’ve heard it about a million times in the past four years.”

     “Good! The boredom will put you to sleep faster.”

     Skye snorts with quiet laughter and rolls over, burrowing into Ward’s side. She presses her cold toes against his leg and he yelps.

     “Are you really worried about Raina?” Skye asks him.

     “I don’t know,” Ward says sombrely. “I’m worried about what she might do… to you.”

     “She’ll never catch me,” Skye says confidently, and then she sighs and squirms and says, “If we’re not going to sleep, can we just have sex? I’m too emotionally drained for a proper conversation right now.”

     “You’re as bad as Hanna,” Ward tells her.

     “Gross. Don’t say ‘Hanna’ right after I’ve said ‘sex’.”

     “Sorry. But she does get all of her personality from you, you know.”

   Skye puts a hand to Ward’s jaw and scratches her fingers lightly through the stubble that he hasn’t been able to shave off over their mission. “That’s not true,” she says, amused. “Haven’t you ever seen the way she focuses during training?”

     “Yeah,” Ward concedes, “all right,” and he actually sounds proud about it, shy, but proud, the silly man.

     For a while, they lie in silence. Skye slides her foot beneath Ward’s knee. She curls her legs up and wraps her hands around his bicep and stays on her side, head pressed into the pillow, eyes closed. Ward is still on his back, but one of his hands rests heavily on Skye’s hip, anchoring her to him.

     He speaks again just as Skye is starting to drift off to sleep. “Skye?”

     “Mmyeah?”

     “Tell me about my brothers again.”

     She sighs, because they’ve had this conversation. “I’ve told you, Ward, I don’t know much. I don’t even know their names – I could find out, if you want.”

     “No,” Ward says. “Just… tell me what you know.”

     If she’s honest, Skye can sort of understand why he clings to this tiny fragment of knowledge about his past so very desperately. That’s always been something she can do – empathise with other people, even when she doesn’t want to. She says, “Your older brother used to beat you up, all the time, for the stupidest reasons. You had to learn to protect your younger brother. Your parents… well, I guess they didn’t help.”

     “And my sister,” Ward says, “what about her?”

     Skye freezes. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

     Ward goes still too. “Someone else must have told me,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. His thumb presses against Skye’s hipbone.

     “It doesn’t matter, you know,” Skye tells him. “It doesn’t matter if you start to remember. Just… hold on to who you are now, as a person. Memories can’t change you.” She struggles to make herself sound more confident than she feels.

     “Of course they can’t,” Ward says, and he doesn’t sound particularly reassuring.

     A long, wavering, drawn-out howl echoes through the entire base and Skye presses her nose to the flesh of Ward’s shoulder and giggles. “Tessie’s howling at the moon again.”

     “Who needs a werewolf when you have an octoseal?” he says.

     “Tessie loves us, you know,” Skye reminds him. “Maybe the other… things… the ones that Raina had – maybe they can love too.”

     “They weren’t like Tessie, Skye. You saw their eyes.”

     Skye had seen their eyes. Dark, fathomless black, surrounded by puffy skin that was red and raw, they had gazed at her without intelligence, without compassion, without understanding. It was a blistering hatred that she’d seen there.

     “Maybe we could help them,” she whispers, but she knows, even as she says it, that it’s never going to happen.

     “We just have to stop her from making more,” Ward insists. “It’s wrong, what she’s doing – it’s ethically wrong on the highest level.”

     Skye knows it’s wrong. She’s seen the twisted products of Raina’s experiments with the Fridge technology – experiments, combining DNA from different species. What Skye can’t understand, though, is what Raina is really trying to do. Is this an attempt to create… or replicate?


	4. Sock Drawer

It’s very early when Hanna climbs into Mummy and Daddy’s bed. She knows it’s early because when she leaves her room the light streaming through the glass ceiling is the pale grey light of dawn. Still, that doesn’t stop Hanna from creeping into her parents’ room and hoisting herself up into her bed. Mummy and Daddy are curled up tight together, but Hanna slides under the covers and wriggles until they make room for her right in the middle.

     Mummy groans, her eyes still tight shut, and rolls over, away from Daddy and Hanna. Mummy isn’t always a morning person.

     Daddy, though, wakes up fast. Hanna watches his face, and then his eyelids shoot open and he looks at her. Hanna grins.

     “Hi, Daddy,” she whispers, and she reaches up to touch his face. “You grew a beard. It’s scratchy.”

     “What are you doing in here?” Daddy murmurs, putting his face close to Hanna’s.

     “I’m not sleepy anymore.”

     Daddy looks over to Mummy, and then he looks back down at Hanna. “Do you want to come to the gym with me?”

     “Yes,” Hanna says happily, and she climbs over Daddy to get out of bed.

     “You have to get dressed,” he says. “I’ll get dressed too, okay?”

     Hanna leaves the room cheerfully and skips down the hall to her own room. She pulls open drawers, chooses the underpants with the flowers and her stretchy black shirt with the long sleeves and her red leggings with the white spots.

     She carries her shirt with her back to Mummy and Daddy’s room – but the room is empty, except for Mummy, who is still asleep.

     Softly, Hanna says, “Daddy?”

     “In here, baby,” he says, and so she trots over to the little room with the toilet and the mirror. Daddy is leaning close to the mirror with white soap on his face.

     “Are you shaving your beard?” Hanna asks. Daddy nods. “Can I shave too?”

     “Sure,” Daddy says. “Um, hold on a second.” He fumbles in a drawer for a minute and pulls out a shaver like his. “This is my old razor,” he explains as he hands it to Hanna.

     “Be careful, it’s sharp?” she suggests, taking it from him. Lots of things are sharp, like knives and spiked shoes.

     “Not… really,” Daddy says. “I made sure it wasn’t sharp.”

     “Oh, okay,” Hanna says, and she drags the shaver across her cheeks and chin just like Daddy.

     When they are both done shaving, Daddy helps Hanna into her shirt, and then they go into the main bathroom for Daddy to brush his teeth and her teeth.

     “Can you pick out some shoes?” Daddy asks.

     Hanna looks at the row outside her door and pounces on her black boots with the buckles at the ankles, like miniature versions of Mummy’s. “These,” she says, holding them up.

     They go up almost to her knees when she’s put them on, and then Hanna and Daddy make their way towards the rope ladders to climb down to the gym on the third floor.

     Today, Hanna climbs all by herself. When they get into the gym Daddy goes to strap his hands, so Hanna stands next to him and holds her hands out too. Afterwards, they go to the punching bag.

    “You start,” Daddy says, and Hanna beams at him.

     She squares up to the bag and starts punching, lightly at first, but getting stronger as she works her way into a more steady rhythm. Hanna steps into the punches, putting more weight and momentum into the blow, punching from her shoulder like Daddy taught her.

     “Keep your right hand up,” Daddy instructs. “You always forget.”

     Hanna raises her right hand higher to protect her face and doesn’t speak, because she’s concentrating. She does look up at Daddy for a second when she stops punching, though, and she smiles very wide, to make sure that he knows she loves him.

***

Ward sends Hanna off towards the kitchen and watches her until she’s out of sight, a mane of hair swinging behind her. When he’s sure that she’s with Coulson, and safe, he returns to his own bedroom.

     Skye is standing in the middle of the room wearing a pair of jeans and a purple bra. She’s frowning off into space, and doesn’t even notice Ward come in.

     He almost laughs at the sheer concentration on her face, but he doesn’t. Instead, he walks up behind her and clears his throat before he dips his chin to rest on her shoulder and runs his hands down across her flat stomach to her hips.

     Absent-mindedly, Skye lifts her hand to thread her fingers into his hair, scratching a little bit at his temple. “Hey, baby,” she says.

     “What are you doing?” Ward asks her.

     “Looking for something,” she murmurs.

     “Looking for what?”

     “I can’t remember,” Skye grumbles, “which is probably why I haven’t found it.” She spins in his arms and kisses him.

   Ward slides one hand up to rest in the small of her back, pressing her closer to him, and brings the other hand higher to tangle in her hair, at which Skye stops kissing him and snorts with badly suppressed laughter.

     “What?”

     “Nothing, it’s just… you always do that. With my hair. You’re such a hair man.”

     Ward rolls his eyes. “Are you going to get dressed and come for breakfast or just walk out there like this?” he asks. One of his hands rests on her bare shoulder and his fingers pluck at the edge of her bra strap.

     Skye’s face brightens suddenly. “My shirt!” she exclaims. “I was looking for my shirt!” She pushes Ward aside and pulls open the top drawer – the drawer which doesn’t hold shirts, but socks, and something else…

     “Skye!” Ward says quickly, but it’s too late, she’s already turning around with the box in her hand.

     “Is this yours?” she asks him.

     “Yes,” he says firmly, and stretches out a hand to take it from her.

     “So why was it wrapped up in a pair of my socks?” Skye asks. She doesn’t relinquish the little box.

     “Accident.”

     “What is it?”

     “Nothing,” Ward says, and then he groans, because that was the wrong answer, and now Skye is looking more curious than ever.

     “Nothing is nothing,” she says cryptically, and pries open the box. “Oh.”

     “Don’t drop it!” Ward says hastily, and he lunges forward to pull the box from her nerveless fingers. “Are you, um okay?”

     “What the hell is that for?” Skye asks.

     “Um.”

     “Ward,” she says menacingly.

     “For, um, you?” His voice squeaks as he says it, and he cringes, and wishes he could sink into the floor. This is so unmanly.

     “What do you mean, for me? How long have you had that?”

     “Not too long,” says Ward’s mouth. Just a couple of _years_ , his brain adds silently.

     “Were you ever going to give it to me?”

     “Yes,” Ward mumbles sheepishly, “I was just waiting for the – the right time.”

     “I see.” Skye folds her arms across her chest. “And when is the right time?”

     Nervously, he wets his lips. “Well, I asked Hanna, and she said-”

   Skye cuts him off. “You asked Hanna?” There’s a strange look on her face. Ward nods. Skye stares at him, and then she says suddenly, “Lock the door.” Her voice sounds strained.

     “What?”

     “Lock the door.”

     Ward crosses to the bedroom door and flips the lock, and then he turns back to Skye and anxiously asks, “Why?”

     “So I can rip your clothes off, you idiot,” Skye tells him, and she runs at him and slings her hands around his neck and kisses him, hard. “I bloody love you,” she mutters with her lips close to his.

     “Thank god,” Ward says fervently. “I thought you were going to use the ring to murder me,” and he kisses her back just as eagerly.

     “I might still do that,” Skye says. “Just… later.”

     After that, there’s blissful silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I did promise fluff. xD Now that one's been fulfilled...


	5. Laundry

Skye leaves Ward in the shower and goes to find her daughter. She doesn’t put the ring on her finger – she’s not ready for that, not yet – but she does tuck it into the side pocket of her jeans. She can think about it later.

     She finds Hanna in the kitchen with Fitzsimmons. The girl is sitting cross-legged on top of the kitchen counter, and Jemma is leaning across the counter to talk to her. There’s a book in-between them, but neither one is looking at it; too animated in their conversation to glance down. Fitz, on the other side of the room, is flat on his back beneath the table with a spanner in his mouth. Skye has no idea what he’s doing.

     She picks up her book from the coffee table, because it’s been frigging forever since she’s had a chance to read, and slumps down onto the sofa, spreading out happily. It’s bliss, to be here with her family like this, and Skye never knows how long it will last – so she always makes the most of it.

     With half of her mind on the book, she still listens aimlessly to what Jemma and Hanna are saying.

     They seem to be in the middle of a biology lesson. “That’s only three groups,” Jemma prompts the little girl. “What are you missing?”

     Hanna says, “Birds, mammals, fish…” and then she tries again, “Birds, mammals, fish…” Nothing comes to her, and she screws up her face with intense concentration. Jemma stays silent, letting Hanna reach the answer on her own. “Birds, mammals, fish… reptiles! Aunty Jemma! Reptiles!”

     “That’s right,” Jemma says, beaming, “that’s four groups. And?”

     “I forget,” Hanna mumbles. “Teach me?”

     “Amphibians,” Jemma says, and Hanna squirms happily on the benchtop and folds her hands into her lap.

     “Amphibians! What do they do?”

     “Amphibians live both in water and on land,” the woman explains. “Things like frogs and newts are amphibians. Typically, they’ll have a larval stage in water and then undergo metamorphosis before they move onto the land.”

     Skye isn’t sure how much of that her daughter understood, but Hanna seems unphased. She says, “Like tadpoles, and then they turn into frogs.”

     “Right, exactly.”

     “And Tessie,” Hanna adds.

     Jemma seems to freeze, and then she says, in a choked sort of voice, “Well, yes, you’re right – really, that’s quite a leap to make – of course we’re not sure if she’s an aquatic mammal or not – depends on her reproductive system, I believe – she could even be a cephalopod… Hanna, really, that’s very clever of you.”

     “Tessie lives in water and on land,” Hanna says eagerly, “like an amphibian.”

     “She eats grass, too,” Jemma continues, still lost in her own musings, “which, when you think about it, is extremely odd. It implies she has the digestive system of a land-dwelling herbivore…”

     “She eats chocolate too!” Hanna supplies, determined to be helpful.

     Skye doesn’t look up from her book, but she says, “Hanna,” and absently flips over another page.

     “Sorry, Mummy,” Hanna mumbles. “I only _sometimes_ feed her chocolate. Only on her _birthday_.”

     Fitz mumbles something through the large metal nuts he’s holding now in his mouth.

     “Beg pardon?” Jemma says snootily, as if she disapproves of Fitz and his mouthful of… things.

     He spits the tools out. “We don’t even know when Tessie’s birthday is, I said.”

     “Sometimes I make up birthdays for her,” Hanna says brightly. “So that I can give her chocolate.”

     Skye rolls her eyes and turns another page.

***

It’s Coulson standing outside the bedroom door when Ward opens it, his hand still raised to knock. This surprises Ward a little bit, because Coulson has always rather liked to pretend that Skye and Ward _don’t_ share a bedroom – and a bed.

     “Sir,” he says, and tries to stand taller and look like he’s not wearing just a towel wrapped low around his hips.

     Coulson, too, is going to great lengths to ignore the towel. He clears his throat, fixes his eyes on Ward’s face, and says, “We’ve found her base of operations.”

     Towel forgotten, Ward’s mind kicks into gear. “Raina’s, sir? Where?”

     “Egypt, of all places,” Coulson tells him. “Cairo.”

     Right, Ward thinks. “Sir, I need to volunteer myself for this mission.”

     “I thought you would, Ward,” Coulson says. “I came to tell you to pack a bag.” He turns to leave, and then, as an afterthought, says over his shoulder, “Oh, and try to get dressed before you get on the plane.”

     “Yes sir,” Ward says sharply, and he closes the bedroom door and rushes to pack.

     Skye comes in five minutes later, when he’s packed and dressed and is shouldering his rucksack in preparation to leave.

     “You’re going, then,” she says.

     “You’re staying,” Ward returns.

     “I wish you wouldn’t get so fixated on things like this,” Skye tells him. “And they want Fitzsimmons to go down to the Academy to work with some of Coulson’s new recruits. Is Trip coming with you?”

     “I haven’t asked him,” Ward says, but he expects Trip will. “If you’re not coming, we’ll be a specialist short.”

     Skye stands on her toes and kisses his jaw. “I’m not going to do this to Hanna,” she says sternly. “You and I, we didn’t grow up with parents who loved us, or supported us, and sure, we still turned out fine – well, it took you a couple of tries, but you got there – but we promised, when we decided to do this together, we _promised_ that we were going to give Hanna something better.”

     “Hanna knows we love her,” Ward says. “She knows she’s safe.” He’s in a hurry. He has to get down to the plane. He wants Skye to get out of his way.

     “You’re changing,” Skye comments. She stands aside from the door. “I don’t know what this vendetta kick is to you, Ward, but you’ve got to figure out your priorities.”

     “I love you,” Ward says, and he bolts for the door.

     Skye doesn’t say anything. She watches him leave.

***

Mummy’s cranky, which Hanna knows, because they go to the gym. When Mummy’s cranky, she goes to the gym. That’s just how it works with Mummy. She does tumbles and rolls on the thick, cream-coloured mat, and then she helps Hanna to do them.

     “Lie on your back,” she explains, “and push up with your arms and legs.”

     A bridge. Hanna knows how to make herself into a bridge – arching her back, so that her stomach points up and her head points down.

     “Now kick off with your feet,” Mummy says, and she plants her hand in the small of Hanna’s back so that when Hanna pushes up with her feet and strains with her arms, she goes up and over and suddenly she’s standing straight again.

     “Wow,” she says, and then quickly, “Do it again, Mummy.”

     Instead, Mummy sits down on the mats, cross-legged the way Hanna likes to sit. She sighs, and so Hanna goes and sits in her lap.

     “I’m sorry I’m sad, gorgeous girl,” Mummy tells her.

     “Is it because Daddy went on the big mission?”

     “Yes.”

     “And Fitz and Aunty Jemma went to the agent-school?”

     “You’ve stopped calling him Uncle Fitz,” Mummy notes. “When did you do that?”

     “I still do call him Uncle, sometimes. Just I think I’m a bit old for Uncle now.”

     Mummy wraps her arms tight around Hanna’s middle and pulls Hanna backwards so that she is surrounded by Mummy, the warmth of her skin and the soft smell of her hair. “You’re never too old for anything,” Mummy tells her. “You always do just exactly what you want to do, okay, Hanna? Never let anyone push you around.”

     Hanna doesn’t think she lets anyone push her around. “I don’t, Mummy.”

     Mummy kisses her cheek, smack, like that. “Want to go downstairs and swim with Tessie?”

     “Yes!” Hanna exclaims, and she jumps to her feet and Mummy stands up too. “Oh, go, Mummy, go, go fast, I want to do _lots_ of swimming.”

     “We’ll go upstairs and get changed,” Mummy says.

    They’re on the top floor when Mummy’s buzzer beeps – the one she carries at her hip, the one that talks to Daddy and everyone else on the team.

     “Who is it?” Hanna asks.

     Mummy checks her buzzer and her face goes very white. “Hanna, baby, go in your room,” she says. “Stay in your room.”

     “Is it Daddy?” Hanna asks. “Is he hurt?”

     “It’ll be fine, baby!” Mummy calls, and she’s already running for the slide. “Just stay in your room! I need to go and help the team.”

     Hanna watches Mummy leap into the slide, rushing fast, fast to the bottom. She turns around with heavy feet and opens her bedroom door.

     There’s a man standing inside, looking through Hanna’s clothes.

     Hanna turns around and screams, “ _MUMMY!_ ” and then she runs, out of her room, along the corridor, because this man is a stranger.

     There’s another man waiting by the slide, and how did he get there so fast? Where is Mummy? Hanna starts to cry, but she turns around, her boots skidding on the floor a little bit, and she runs even faster down the corridor, because she can go somewhere that these men can’t go – no, they’re too big. With her heart thumping so hard, Hanna reaches the end of the corridor and she climbs into the _laundry chute_ , of all things, and she hangs onto the bar at the top with both hands and looks down. It’s an almost sheer drop.

     Hanna lets go of the bar.

     She doesn’t scream as she flies down the near-vertical side of the laundry chute, and she doesn’t even scream when the slope suddenly catches her and she skids out at the bottom, into the laundry. One of her knees hits the washing machine, hard, and ouch, ouch, a bruise, but Hanna can’t stop. She runs out of the laundry and then she sees four things. She sees glass on the floor. She sees the men with guns, standing on the first floor bridges above her. She sees the door to the hangar bay, where Mummy went. And she sees the door to Tessie’s room is open and Tessie is about to come running to Hanna, Tessie, who doesn’t understand about men with guns.

     Hanna runs. She runs away from the hangar bay and Mummy. She runs across the glass on the floor and she runs to Tessie’s room and she slams Tessie’s door shut and then a big man grabs her up in his arms.

     “Gotcha,” he says.

     Hanna closes her mouth and presses her teeth together, tight, tight. She is not going to say _anything_. Nothing at all. Not until she sees her Mummy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, you all knew angst was coming. This is just the beginning.
> 
> I'm terribly sorry that this chapter has been so long in coming - I had what I wanted to say planned out days ago, really, but unfortunately exams got in the way. High school sucks. I still have one exam left before I'm finished, so expect a few more days without an update before I can have a break (HOLIDAYS) and write again.
> 
> And yes, I'm still in high school. Try not to judge me for it. I'm sixteen. I only have, like, two years left.


	6. Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Exams are over, woot woot! Back to doing fun stuff like a pro. Here, have a chapter!
> 
> This one is written in a slightly different way from previous ones, and I hope it's not too confusing - it's just the only way the chapter worked. The next few might also be doing quite a bit of jumping.

“I’m not going to say nothing,” Hanna says stubbornly.

     Raina pauses, confused by the double negative. “You mean you won’t say anything?” she asks, and then mentally chastises herself for letting the child rule the conversation.

     “That’s right,” Hanna nods smugly.

     She’s a child – a _child_ , honestly. This is ridiculous. Raina is being beaten at her own game by a four-year-old child who seems impervious to manipulation, to threats, to violence, to lollipops. What kind of little girl won’t take a lollipop?

     “You’re four years old,” she says, just to confirm that this isn’t a miniature adult sitting before her.

     “Four and three quarters,” Hanna mutters scornfully. “You have to count the quarters. I’ll be five in April.”

     Maybe, Raina thinks, she’s some kind of hyper-trained spy. It’s happened before – the Russians did it. But then there’s Coulson to consider. Would he allow a child to be used in this way?

     They’ve been on the plane for three hours. There are another six hours to go before they reach the base – _not_ the abandoned base in Cairo, where Coulson’s team is currently walking into Raina’s trap, obviously. Six hours of sitting here, with this child, and trying to feel like she’s in control of the situation.

     Raina gets to her feet, gracefully, delicately. She brushes imaginary specks of lint from the front of her dress.

     “Where are you going?” Hanna asks.

     “I’ll be back soon,” Raina says enigmatically, and then she glides from the room. She needs a stiff drink and a reminder of her goal before she can go back in there.

***

_Four Hours Ago_

Skye knows something is wrong as soon as she runs into the hangar bay. The space is big, open, wide and completely empty. There isn’t anyone hurt down here – there isn’t anyone _at all_ down here.

     She stops barely ten paces into the room. Intuition raises all the hairs on the back of her neck, sending an uncomfortable prickling down her spine. Skye thinks : _Trap…_

     And the hangar door slams shut.

     She whirls, runs for the door and throws herself against it. Her shoulder slams into the metal. The door jerks outwards under the pressure and then thuds back into the frame. Someone is standing outside the door, holding it shut. Keeping Skye inside.

     From the other side of the door, Skye hears Hanna scream.

     “Hanna!” she yells, desperate, unable to stop herself. She hurls herself at the door with renewed vigour, hitting it again and again, bruising her arms, her chest. The door shudders with every impact but it never gives.

     “Don’t hurt yourself, Agent Triplett,” someone calls to her.

     Triplett? she thinks. What? Skye stops banging the door for a single puzzled instant, and in that second it opens a crack and something is hurled through the gap. Something shaped like a grenade.

     Skye doesn’t have time to take cover – the thing explodes with a dull thump and a flash of light and Skye falls, limp. She hits the ground hard and doesn’t get up.

***

_Five Hours Ago_

They’re halfway through the country of Cameroon, in Africa, when Ward’s doubts start to be too much for him to handle. So he does what he always does in a crisis – he seeks out a bro.

     Trip is piloting the plane, which suits Ward fine, since there’s no one else in the cockpit. He slumps heavily into the co-pilot’s seat and tries not to think about the time he and Skye had sex in this cockpit.

     “Hey,” Trip says, glancing over at him. “What’s wrong?”

     “How do you know something is wrong?” Ward says, instantly going on the defensive.

     “Calm down,” Trip tells him firmly. “Your face telegraphs, okay? Besides, you’re not bragging about that one time you and Skye shacked up in here, which is the only other reason I can think of for you coming up to the cockpit.”

     “It’s Skye,” Ward admits.

     “So you _are_ going to tell me about the time you shacked up? Ew. Nasty.”

     “No, that’s not it,” Ward says heatedly, before he realises that Trip is joking. “That was a joke.”

     “Yeah.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     Trip leans back in his chair, keeping his hands loosely on the yoke. “You seem a little tense,” he observes. “If I had to take a guess, I’d say you felt bad for leaving Skye and Hanna behind.”

     Ward sighs. “I do. I shouldn’t have come on the mission – and I argued with Skye before I left, which doesn’t help.”

     “I could always turn the plane around,” Trip offers. He seems genuine. Ward is touched.

     “What about Coulson?”

     “Screw Coulson,” Trip says, and then adds, “in the most respectful, Director-of-SHIELD-type way, of course.”

     “Of course,” Ward says.

     “Can I say something, Ward?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Right, well, it seems to me that you and Skye have conflicting interests lately. Maybe the past few months, maybe a bit longer. She’s trying to focus more on Hanna – which is difficult, since she already focussed on Hanna pretty damn much. You’re trying to focus more on your work, and I think that’s a bit weird, to be honest. What’s changed?”

     “I just feel like the work – it means more to me than it used to.”

     “Why?”

     “I don’t know why, it just does!” he snaps, and then groans. “See? I’m always yelling at everyone. I just feel so _angry_ all the time, and _conflicted_. I never know _what_ I should be doing.”

     “You know, relationships are one thing that a lot of SHIELD agents have trouble with,” Trip tells Ward. “It’s what makes us good agents – that we can’t separate our lives from the job.”

     “Well you had a serious girlfriend, didn’t you? What was her name? Monica Someone?”

     “Monica Trebowsky, yeah. And we broke up.”

     “Oh, really? Ouch. I’m sorry.”

     “I’m not,” Trip says honestly. “The thing is, Ward, you have a lot more to lose than most of us do. Fitzsimmons, if they break up, sure, they might argue a bit at work for a few weeks…”

     “Fitz and Simmons aren’t dating.”

     “They will be. Let me finish. You have more to lose than any of us, because you and Skye have a kid. And hey, maybe it is your relationship with Skye that’s the problem, you know? Maybe you and her need a break. But you can’t _ever_ take a break from Hanna. You see where I’m going with this, Ward?”

     “I think so,” Ward says uncertainly, “but I’m not quite sure.”

     “Let me know when you figure it out, man,” Trip tells him. “I’m always happy to talk.”

     “You’re just a gossip-hound,” Ward mutters, but he does get up from his seat feeling a lot better. “Skye and I had sex right there, look, right where your foot is.”

     Trip yanks his foot away from the offending spot. “You’re a jerk, you know that?”

     “You never let me forget it.”

***

_Four Hours Ago_

Skye’s head throbs so furiously that she is genuinely worried it will fall off. She can’t open her eyes, because the pain is too bad. It’s jabs of agony shooting into her skull and down her back.

     Then she thinks of Hanna and she forces her eyelids open. The light makes her headache worse. She doesn’t know what that grenade did, but she feels as if she’s suffering from the worst hangover she’s had in the past six years. Or maybe in her whole life.

     She thinks of Hanna again and forces herself onto hands and knees. The pain peaks, and, stubbornly, Skye gets to her feet.

     Her head throbs so hard that she goes right back down to her knees, can’t think, can’t see, can’t move, can’t breathe. It’s just pain. Endless, unbearable pain.

     The agony ebbs, and Skye gets to her feet again. This time, breathing deeply as if she’s giving birth again, she’s able to keep standing.

     There’s no doubt in her mind that she’s been unconscious for several minutes. By now, Hanna and the people who took her will be long gone. Slowly, Skye’s brain starts to kick into gear. The hangar is the only way in or out of the base. Unless they came through here while she was unconscious, they can’t possible have left.

     She goes over to the door and finds that it’s been blown out of shape by the force of the grenade. It’s never going to open. Pressing her ear to the cool metal, Skye listens hard. She can hear Tessie yelping in the distance, frustrated and alone, but not a single other sound.

     So, they got out some other way. Skye has to get out this way, and she has to follow them, because they probably had a plane, or at least a helicopter. There’s nothing in the hangar – the team took the Bus and the smaller jet, and Skye has nothing… or, no, wait.

     There’s a small storage cupboard set into the wall near the door. Skye limps towards it, and she thinks back, to when Coulson brought the last tour group of new SHIELD potentials through here. He was showing them something, some invention, something to do with…

     She opens the cupboard.

     …wings. A single pair of folded wings lies in the cupboard in front of Skye, and she closes her eyes and thinks about praying (or throwing up, because the pain in her head is spiking again). This is it. Her way to Hanna.

***

_Present_

It’s one of the mercenaries who comes to Raina and says, “Ma’am.”

     She prefers her own soldiers. They don’t call her by stupid, out-dated titles – they offer her genuine respect and loyalty instead.

     “What is it?” she asks the man, making her voice soft and inviting. He smirks at her. He thinks she’s doing it _for_ him, the idiot.

     “That smaller signal that’s been following us the past hour or so – it’s gaining. We can’t get a proper fix on the technology, Ma’am, and we believe it comes from the base that we just raided. None of us have ever seen anything like it before.”

     Raina raises a single eyebrow. “It’s from SHIELD?”

     “We think so, yes Ma’am,” he says.

     “Oh,” Raina says, opening her mouth to let the round vowel slip out, making her eyes huge in her face. Surprise, an unthreatening and extraordinarily tactical emotion. “Do you believe it will be a danger to us?” Let him think it’s his idea.

     “I imagine it’s a drone of some kind, probably equipped with missiles.”

     He’s too slow. Raina pushes him again, more gently, keeping her face in that mask of shock and allowing a hint of fear to colour her voice. “What do you think we should do?”

     The mercenary speaks more slowly now, out of sympathy to the innocent woman commanding him. “I believe the safest course of action would be to shoot it out of the sky, Ma’am.”

     “Of course,” Raina says instantly, “you’re right.” She thinks, _finally_. “Do what you have to do. Shoot it down.”


	7. Whatever It Takes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Sorry it has been SO long since the last chapter - I totally hate it when fanfiction writers make me wait for something, and I'm like "RAWR, write faster you suckers", so I feel very bad about my mysterious absence. Very, very bad. But, I've been busy with life, and archery, and swimming, and walking dogs, washing dishes, brushing my hair and eating pie. Basically anything that isn't homework. (I've been doing that, too.)
> 
> This chapter has a slight warning for faintly inappropriate content. The Teen rating still stands, but this story in particular gets less family-friendly here, so watch out for that. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, and I REALLY want to get this series finished ASAP - as in, before the show starts! :O

Skye’s been expecting something like this, so she’s not surprised when the Sidewinder missile claws its way out of the plane in front of her and twists through the air towards her. She doesn’t exactly want to lose her wings – her best form of transport – but she doesn’t want to get blown to pieces, either. Skye points herself at the ground and swoops in hard, diving so fast that the wind rips her hair behind her and ripples through the skin of her cheeks.

     The missile follows her, ungainly and awkward in its flight.

     As it gets closer, Skye points the wings upwards again, engages their small, humming engine and then smacks herself hard in the chest with a closed fist. Her seatbelt buckle springs open and she drops, straight down, from ten metres up.

     Skye lands perfectly, the way she’s been trained, knees bent, arms wrapped around her head, and she falls instantly to the side, letting her body crumple and all her muscles go slack. For a second after her momentum finally stops, the pain in her legs is too strong for her to move – but then she forces herself to her feet and starts running. Above her, the wings and the Sidewinder are on a direct collision course, and Skye doesn’t know how big the explosion will be… but she wants to get out of here. _Now_.

     The explosion, when it comes, is strong enough to knock her off her feet and face-first into the dirt. There’s heat on Skye’s back, but the wings had travelled up far enough that the blossom of flame can’t touch her.

     When the noise and the heat has faded, Skye gets to her feet again. Fragments of her mode of transport drift quietly to the ground around her. Above her, Raina’s plane is vanishing into the distance with Hanna on board.

     The knowledge strikes Skye like a bolt of lightning; that she will do _anything_ for this child. _Anything_ , and everything, whatever it takes, no matter the cost. It’s a sharp sort of feeling, and it leaves Skye breathless for a minute or two, while she tries to imagine how _whatever it takes_ might look. She shakes the thoughts away when Raina’s plane finally disappears. First things first, she tells herself. A mode of transport.

***

Ward doesn’t know how long they’ve been in Cairo for, but it’s pretty clear they’re not going to find anything of value here. The entire place is cleaned out, emptied, even dusted – except for a single chewing gum wrapper on the floor, which feels remarkably like someone is mocking them.

     Trip is the one who bends down and picks it up. “We could get a fingerprint?” he offers.

     “We already know who we’re looking for,” Coulson says dismally. “She’s just not… _here_."

     There’s a flicker of something over May’s face. “Coulson,” she says, low and menacing. He turns towards her and she fixes him with a dark, steady gaze. Whatever it is he’s seeing in her eyes, it seems to give Coulson some kind of resolve.

     “You’re right,” he nods.

   Trip frowns. “She, uh, she didn’t _say_ anything.”

     May shifts her glare to aim at Trip. “This is a distraction,” she says clearly.

     “We need to go back,” Coulson agrees.

     Ward’s legs feel weak. _Skye_ , he thinks. _Hanna_. “I’ll go and start the jet.”

***

Skye pawns the ring that Ward gave her for eight hundred dollars. It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but it’s better than the nothing she’d had previously. Searching the pockets of her jeans for cash had yielded something strange, angular and hard and round all at once, and then Skye had pulled it out and remembered.

     God, it seemed like a lifetime ago that Ward had given her that ring. Skye can barely believe it only happened this morning. She thinks back, but the ring and having sex with Ward up against the wall beside the dresser feel like part of someone else’s life, even though Skye still has the bruise on her bicep from the corner of the open sock drawer.

     There’s a sort of hardness in Skye as she hands the ring over and waits for her cash. It comes out through her face, too, and dissuades the woman standing behind the desk from asking any questions.

     Eight hundred dollars is enough for her to catch a bus into San Francisco. Skye hits a snag when she arrives in the airport and realises that she doesn’t have a passport, a credit card, a driver’s license… she has _nothing_ , except for seven hundred dollars in cash.

     Well, okay then. Surely Skye’s been in worse situations than this. She’s been mollycoddled a little bit for the past several years, but it’s time to get back to what she does best. Skye knows how to live on the streets. She knows how to make it work for her.

     She gets a taxi from the airport to the closest shopping mall. Down to six hundred and forty-seven dollars. The mall is big, airy and filled with people who don’t look twice at Skye, too busy with their own lives, which is just the way she likes it. She scours the place for the shops that sell the skimpiest, tightest clothes – the ones she would never normally go for. Skye’s a comfort, not a style girl.

     Briefly, she considers stealing the clothes she wants, but it’s been a long time since she’d shoplifted to survive, and a trip to the police station right now would delay her. Instead, she pays for it all. Four hundred and eighty-two dollars left.

    Clothes are done, so Skye goes for the make-up department. She buys cheap mascara, a tube of bright lipstick and a way to get it all off later, because she doesn’t want to be stuck in clown-face. She does her make-up in the mall’s public bathroom, because it has a mirror. The red paints across her lips, sharp and vivid, an unnatural, cherry-red colour. The mascara Skye lays on thickly, so thickly that she feels it heavy on her lashes, and it brushes against her cheeks every time she blinks.

     Skye stays in the mall for the next two hours and waits. It gets darker and darker outside, but in here it’s warm and noisy and comfortable. She buys herself Oreos, because she’s too cheap for real food. Four hundred, seventy-nine dollars and forty-five cents. She needs a weapon, too, so she finds a shop selling household appliances and buys herself a set of knives, a backpack and a towel. Four hundred and sixty dollars.

    Finally, when it’s nearly ten o’clock, Skye leaves the mall and sets out across the city. She wraps the knives up in the towel and sets them in the backpack, except for one, which she slides up her sleeve and keeps in her hand.

     It’s not hard to find the seedy areas of a city. They used to be Skye’s zone, the place where she’d park her van and hang out, making small-talk with the prostitutes who strolled past, always with dozens of people around her. The excuse she gave herself was that they always warned her when the cops turned up. In reality, Skye thinks, she just didn’t like to be alone.

     There’s a road without any streetlights. Skye turns down it and finds herself right in the thick of things, with both men and woman lounging around, waiting for the cars that troll for pick-ups. In the shadow of a doorway, Skye changes into the new clothes she’d bought herself. She touches up her make-up with the dark glass of a window as a mirror, and then she straightens the wrinkles on her knee-high boots, adjusts her dress and tugs the wide belt up a little, to emphasise both her waist and hips.

     Someone corners Skye as she steps out of the doorway and says, “This ain’t your patch.”

     Skye wonders, idly, if he’s a pimp. He doesn’t look old enough to be out of school. “I can pay you for it,” she says.

     He frowns. “Now that’s just dumb. Aren’t you here to try and _earn?”_ Pale, shaved head, rolling a toothpick between his teeth, tattoo on his neck – he’s not a serious threat, Skye thinks. He’s too young, too uncertain, too unsure of himself. He’s new, just like her.

     She shrugs in response to his question, trying to seem enigmatic. “That’s my business.”

     The kid rolls his eyes. “You can pay me, _then_ you can leave.”

     Skye is still holding the knife. She angles it so that the blade catches the light. “Or I can stab you here and watch you bleed out in front of me,” she tells him. “Back off.”

     He holds up his own knife, flicking the blade out. “Snap.”

     If it comes to a fight between the two of them, Skye knows she’ll win. She’s been training with SHIELD for six years, now, and she’s experienced in most forms of hand-to-hand combat. What she isn’t, though, is May. May could take this guy out without a sound and drag him into the shadows to hide the body. Skye would probably get him in the end, but it would be noisy, it would draw attention to her, and it’s not something she wants.

     She holds up her hands in the ‘surrender’ gesture, even though one of them is still clutching the knife. “Hey, okay,” she says. “I’ll leave.” She picks up her bag and walks slowly away from him, keeping her eyes on his knife.

     There’s a honk from the road. An SUV pulls up beside Skye – big, black, shiny. The window rolls down and she says, “Hey, sugar,” automatically.

     Apparently, luck is on her side. “Want a ride, baby?” someone asks her from inside.

     Skye casts a glance back at the wannabe pimp with the knife. She tucks her own knife in her bag, says, “Hell yes,” and climbs into the passenger seat. Behind her, the window buzzes up again. It’s tinted, not that it makes a difference. There are a dozen different sex acts going on all around them.

     “What’s in the bag?” the guy asks, smiling at her. He’s average-looking, not someone that she’d pick as sleazy or gross just by glancing at him. A bit old, maybe, with thinning hair and a bald patch at the back.

     “Dildos,” Skye blurts. It’s the first sex-appropriate answer that comes to mind, and she cringes when she hears it coming out of her mouth.

     “Aw, you don’t need them, baby,” the guy banters. “I’ve got a _real_ cock.”

     Skye forces herself to smile, and wink. “Yeah? Why don’t you show me.”

     He gets excited, then, and starts fumbling to unbuckle his belt. When he unzips his pants, Skye hits him, hard, with her elbow against his nose. It smashes; starts bleeding, and his eyes water too, which is the best part of nose shots.

     “Hey!” he yells, and Skye takes advantage of his disorientation to smack the hilt of her knife into his temple, once, twice, until he slumps and goes still.

     It takes longer than she’d thought to heave his unresponsive body over into the backseat. She manages it after half an hour, and then she slides into the driver’s seat and presses her foot down on the accelerator. The car responds instantly, the idling engine coming to life and roaring, and it’s a manual car, Skye realises. That’s cool. She can drive them.

     Clutch down, first gear, and they’re off up the street. Second gear as they turn the corner onto the more brightly lit road nearby. Skye drives with no destination in mind until she reaches somewhere that feels safe, where there are people and lights and restaurants. She pulls over, grabs her phone and plugs in a destination, and then she gets into the back, opens the door, and tips the unconscious man out onto the pavement.

     The SUV is gone before people even notice the guy is there.


	8. Dazed

The Playground is in ruins. May pulls the jet in to land and Ward tumbles down the cargo ramp before the engines have even ceased.

     He runs, away from the noise, through the hangar and into a door which is an unrecognisable bent lump of metal. There’s blood on the floor, and the twisted remains of a grenade, and Ward bends over double, resting his hands on his knees, breathing hard through the agony. Oh, god, he should have stayed, he should have stayed with Skye. With Hanna.

     Trip comes up behind him and rests a hand on his shoulder. “Ward,” he says, “this isn’t your fault.”

     Angrily, Ward throws the other man’s hand away and stands up straight. “You don’t know anything about me!” he screams into Trip’s face.

     Triplett doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch. “Do you think this is helping?” he asks instead, in a tone that is calm and rational and reasonable. “Come on, Ward.” Without another word, Trip turns away and starts to examine the damaged hangar door.

     It takes Ward a couple of minutes to force his anger down, crush it back under control. He can’t feel anything but rage, blinding hatred, a fury beyond anything he can ever remember feeling before. He wants to _hurt_ someone.

     “They went in through the roof,” May says bluntly from behind them. “Pull yourself together, Ward. We need to figure out where they’ve gone.”

     He takes a deep breath. “The Bus is with Fitz and Simmons at the Academy.”

     “Good,” Trip tells him. “You’re starting to think again. That’s good.”

     Ward puts a hand to his head, which is aching. “I just need my family back.”

     “We all do,” May says, and the tone of her voice tells Ward exactly how selfishly he is acting. “You’re not the only one who’s hurting.”

   Okay, he thinks, okay. He gets the message. “I’m sorry.”

     “We don’t have time for that,” she tells him, and he recognises that she’s willing to move past it. “Coulson’s loading the octoseal into the jet. We’re going to meet up with Fitzsimmons.”

    Trip frowns. “Uh, Tessie’s coming?”

     “She’s one of the earliest experimental gene therapy projects in the Fridge,” May explains. “We might be able to use that to extrapolate information.”

     “Don’t hurt her,” Ward says numbly. “Skye will kill you if you hurt her.”

     “Come on, man,” Trip says, and he slaps Ward’s shoulder. “Let’s go get your girls.”

***

Skye drives north without stopping. She doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t eat, she occasionally pulls over to pee by the side of the road, because she’s not a guy and she can’t pee in a water bottle. Twice, she fills the car up at a petrol station before roaring off without paying.

     By now, she figures, one of the two places will have pulled her number plate from their CCTV. It’s late when she stops at the third petrol station, and dark. She waits in the car for a good ten minutes before a second car pulls up alongside. She watches the man while he gets out, fills up, and then puts the cap on. Skye pulls her hood over her head and gets out of the car. She beats the man bloody before she takes his keys and his car and leaves with them.

     At this rate, she’s never going to reach Hanna. It’s going to take her days to keep going north like this, and she still doesn’t know _exactly_ where Raina was headed. Just that it was north.

     She makes it as far as Portland before she crashes. Driving through the city, her head feels foggy and her mouth dry, and then she passes out behind the wheel and smashes into a concrete barrier.

     Skye wakes up in hospital. She opens her eyes and she’s alone in a yellow-white room, lying on a bed, tubes in her wrist, elbow, and neck. Her whole body aches. Skye thinks, _Hanna_ and she tries to sit up.

     Somehow, her movement summons nurses, who come running to her bed and flock in a crowd around her. “Don’t try to get up,” one of them says.

     “I gotta go,” Skye tells them.

     “What’s your name?” another one asks.

     “Leave me alone,” Skye says. She strikes out with her hand when a man bends over her and hits him in the face. Instantly, the other two nurses restrain her.

     “She’s delirious,” the male nurse says, hand to his jaw. “Sedate her.”

     “We can’t,” another one objects. “She’s on too many painkillers, it’s dangerous.”

     Their words buzz around Skye’s head like hornets. Her brain feels like it’s filled with cotton wool. She’s struggling to understand what’s going on. All she knows is that she needs to get to her daughter. “Fuck you, Hydra,” she says, and then she passes out again.

     The next time she opens her eyes, there’s a doctor in the room. He gives her a cursory glance before starting to move away.

     “Hey,” Skye rasps. “Hey, tell me what’s going on.”

     He turns around again. “You were in an accident,” he says.

     “I know,” Skye snaps, and then she coughs. “Can I leave, please? You’re not allowed to hold me here.”

     The man ignores her. He walks out of the room.

     Skye looks at the tubes snaking from her wrist. She tries to lift her right arm and it’s heavy – it’s in a cast. Skye ignores it. She peels the tape from her left wrist off and pulls the needle out. It makes her wince, but then it’s gone, and she goes for the ones in her elbow, too. There’s only one left, in her neck. She tries to move it and a wave of pain swells through her. She tries to lie still, tries to close her eyes, to stop the pain… it’s just getting worse. She leans over the side of the bed and throws up.

     The next time she wakes up, there’s a man with dark skin standing beside her bed.

     “Drink this,” he says, in a thick Indian accent. He holds a cup of water towards her with a straw in it and Skye sips, gratefully.

     “Please tell me what happened,” she whispers.

     “Sweetheart,” the man says, “I am only the janitor.”

     Skye lifts her broken arm and runs it through her hair. It’s sticky. There’s blood in it. “Can you get me a doctor?”

     “I am a doctor,” he says.

     She frowns. “I thought you said you were the janitor?”

     “No,” the man says slowly, “I am a doctor.”

     Skye groans. “I don’t understand.”

     “You are on strong medication,” he tells her. “Powerful painkillers.”

     She touches the tube in her neck. “Please can this come out.”

     “You will have to take your painkillers orally,” he warns.

     “I don’t care,” she tells him. “Take it out.”

     He shrugs and bends over her, and then Skye thinks she passes out again, because everything goes black.

     The next time she wakes up, her head is clear for the first time in two days. She stops a nurse walking past. “I need the tube in my neck out,” she says. Her head is pounding. It’s agony.

     “You’ll have to take your painkillers orally,” the woman warns sternly. “You have a fractured skull. It’s very painful.”

     Skye says, “I don’t _care_ , take it _out_.”

     “I’ll come back with painkillers,” the woman says.

     She does come back, almost an hour later, and she forces a syringe of sticky liquid into Skye’s mouth and depresses the end, so that Skye has to swallow the stuff. It’s disgusting. It makes her feel nauseous, and her stomach rolls, but then the woman removes the tube in her neck. Skye thinks, finally.

     This time, she waits until everyone has gone from the room before she tries to stand up. It makes her head spin and throb and pound and her whole body hurts. She’s a mass of bruises, she realises, looking at herself. Most of her body is exposed in the thin hospital gown. Skye looks around for her clothes, her bag, her cash. There’s nothing. She has nothing.

     Think, she tells herself. You have to do something. Call someone. Call Ward.

     No, because she doesn’t have a phone. She can’t call. She has to do this herself.

     Get a phone! The brain injury must have made Skye stupid.

     She snatches up the thin wool blanket from her bed and drapes it around herself, and then she hobbles out of the room. There are nurses everywhere, patients and visitors, and none of them pay her any attention. Skye fixes a look on her face like she knows what she’s doing, and she makes her slow and painful way towards the elevators.

     There’s a button for a basement carpark. She goes down alone, gets out and walks past two people who stare at her like she’s some kind of freak of nature. Geez, Skye wants to yell at them, haven’t you ever seen a woman in a paper hospital gown and a blanket before?

     She finds a car, and then she finds a fire extinguisher, which she throws through the window of the car. The door pops open. Everything hurts Skye’s head. Even the impact of fire extinguisher on window hurt her head. She cuts her feet on broken glass as she gets into the car, and then she struggles to connect the wires beneath the dash while an alarm wails all around her like a siren. It’s the most awful, ear-splitting sound she’s ever heard. Her head is falling apart.

     Somehow, through some miracle, Skye starts the car. Her mind is fixed on Hanna as she struggles to navigate out of the carpark. There’s a barrier at the exit, with a ticket machine behind it. Skye buckles her seatbelt, and then she points the nose of the car at the barrier, shuts her eyes and guns the engine.

     She smashes through with an impact that jars her head and makes her want to cry and vomit, possibly at the same time. She doesn’t do either, but she screams with the pain and then she’s on the street. Next stop, Skye thinks. Wherever Hanna is.

     She forgets all about the phone call.


	9. Swim

_Skye closes the book and looks up, at Hanna’s small, brown face huddled beneath the blue bedcovers._

_“That’s it,” she says. “That’s the end of the chapter.”_

_Hanna puts her hands beneath her chin. “What’s the next one called?”_

_“The next chapter?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_Skye flips the book open again, checks the words. “The Mystery’s Not Over Yet.”_

_There’s a pause, and Hanna tugs on one of the plaits which fall past her face. Carefully, choosing each word, she says, “Mummy?”_

_“Yes baby?”_

_“Sometimes I heard of little girls who get_ two _chapters read to them before bedtime.”_

     _Skye thinks that she’s a terrible parent, but the thing is, she’s a sucker for those huge brown eyes and that small, heart-shaped face and the high, sweet voice that Hanna asks in. “Shall we have one more chapter, then?”_

_Beneath the blankets, Hanna squirms with delight. “Yes,” she beams, and Skye holds the book open and begins to read._

***

Raina and the man are talking, with their backs turned to Hanna like that stops her from hearing them. She _can_ still hear them, though, because she’s listening with her ears wide open. Mummy always says that Hanna is good at listening to grown-ups talk. She says Hanna is too good at it, maybe.

     Hanna misses her Mummy.

     Raina sighs, and then says quietly, “I don’t care how you do it, just get her here.”

     “How do you expect me to find her?” the man snaps.

     The man interests Hanna. He has dark hair and eyes, with thick eyebrows that are always frowning. He’s also the only person she’s seen argue with Raina so far, which makes him unique.

     “Use your skills,” Raina says gently. “I’m told you have many.” She turns away from him, indicating that the conversation is over. Back towards Hanna.

     Hanna folds her arms across her chest. “What do you want now?”

     From her pocket, Raina extracts a slim glass tube. “Open your mouth. Say ‘ahh’.”

     “Why?”

     “For a test,” Raina says patiently.

     “Why?”

     “Why what?”

     “Why?” Hanna repeats stubbornly.

     For a second, Raina closes her eyes. She sighs again, and then she opens them and sticks a fake smile across her face. “If you do this for me, I’ll give you something?”

   Suspicious, Hanna leans backwards in her chair. “What?”

     “I don’t know. What do you want?”

     The girl considers. “I want to go for a walk. With fresh air. And I also want a puppy.” It’s _always_ worth a try.

     “I can definitely arrange that walk,” Raina says, still smiling. “I’ll have to think about the puppy.”

     Grudgingly, Hanna opens her mouth. She says, “Ahhh,” and watches with crossed eyes as Raina extracts something which looks like an ear-cleaner from the glass tube. She touches the sticky cotton head to the inside of Hanna’s cheek, and then she puts the swab back in the tube.

     “All done.”

     “That’s for ears,” Hanna tells her, pointing at the swab. “Not mouths.” She wonders if anyone ever cleaned Raina’s ears for her. “Did your mummy clean your ears?”

     Raina hesitates. Something flickers over her face. “No.”

     “Well those are for ears,” Hanna explains. “You use the Paddle-Pop sticks for mouths. Like a doctor.” She’s never been to a doctor, but Mummy says that Aunty Jemma is good enough.

     “I’ll remember that, next time,” Raina says. “Thank you.” She starts to leave, and Hanna leaps up, out of her chair, knocking it with her knees so that it falls over.

     “Wait! What about my walk?”

     “Someone will come to take you soon,” the woman promises.

     Hanna stares at the bright, shiny red of the flowers printed across Raina’s dress and she scowls. “I want to go _now_.”

     “Everyone’s busy right now.”

     “I can go by my _self_.”

     “No, you can’t,” Raina says sweetly.

     Hanna _hates_ her sweet voice. “Your dress is ugly,” she says pointedly, and then she sits down cross-legged on the floor and glares at her feet. She ignores Raina until she hears the click of the door shutting again.

***

_“Mummy,” Hanna asks, “will you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep.”_

_The bedroom is dark, with pinpoints of light scattered across the ceiling and walls. They’re Hanna’s glow-in-the-dark stars, and constellations. There’s even a moon high up in one corner. Skye tips her head back to look at them and smiles, exhausted but satisfied._

_She promised herself, once, a long time ago, that she would give her daughter everything. That, above all else, Hanna would feel safe._

_“Yes, baby,” she says, and she reaches up onto the bed to seek out her daughter’s tiny, warm hand and hang onto it. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”_

_“I wish you could_ always _stay with me,” Hanna murmurs._

_It breaks Skye’s heart. “So do I, baby,” she whispers. “So do I.”_

***

There’s a lancing sort of pain growing behind Skye’s ear, and she doesn’t think she can drive for much longer, not unless she wants to be in another accident.

     She keeps remembering things about Hanna. Little things, stupid things, things that pop into her head out of nowhere. Things that didn’t seem important at the time, when she thought she’d have weeks – months – years more to spend with her baby.

     Last year, for Mother’s Day, Hanna had brought Skye flowers. “Uncle Fitz says all girls like flowers,” she’d said suspiciously, and thrust them in Skye’s face. “Here.”

     With the petals of several small, handpicked daisies poking up her nose, Skye had smiled. “They’re beautiful,” she told Hanna.

     “Mother’s Day means that mothers get presents,” Hanna explained, like Skye might not know. “And also Daddy says I have to say thank you because you made me. When did you make me?”

     “Before you were born,” Skye answered promptly.

     “Oh.” Hanna considered. “Did it take a long time?”

     “About nine months,” Skye smiled.

     “That _is_ long,” Hanna had said. “What day did you make my big toe?” She lifted up her bare foot and waggled it in Skye’s face along with the flowers. “Because it’s a bit crooked so I think you were busy that day.”

     It’s the memories, more than the pain, that make tears leak out of the side of Skye’s ears and trickle down her cheeks and nose. It’s the pain, though, that makes her pull the car over and crumble in a heap by the side of the road, clutching at her aching head and trying not to breathe.

     A hand on her shoulder makes her cringe, tugging on already overworked neck muscles. Skye groans with the pain, and slowly opens her eyes.

     “Ward,” she says, in absolute relief, and then the world clears around her and she sees someone new.

     The man looming over her waves a hand in front of her eyes. “ _This is not the Ward you’re looking for,_ ” he intones, in a passable Obi-Wan Kenobi impression.

     “Who the hell are you?” Skye asks, quite calmly, she thinks, given the situation. A thought occurs to her. “Are you Ward’s dipshit older brother?”

     The man chuckles. “Who, Maynard? No.”

     Skye pauses. “His brother’s name is Maynard? Really? Maynard? Maynard Ward? Seriously?”

     “That’s probably why he was so aggressive all the time,” the man says, straight-faced.

     “All right, so what’s your name?”

     He smirks. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

     She scowls. “Listen, smartass, my head is killing me right now. I don’t need your nonsense.”

     He shrugs. “No, seriously. It’s classified. I can’t say.”

     “What can you say?”

     There’s a sort of sympathetic look on the unnamed Ward’s face, now. “Hail Hydra.”

     “Oh,” Skye says. She thinks about it. “So I guess something like being a huge douchebag really does run in the family, huh?”

     “You could say that,” the man agreed. He’s definitely younger than Ward, now that she looks. He’s taller, as well, if that’s even possible, with broader shoulders and a shorter chin. His earlobes attach to the side of his head weirdly. Skye can see herself playing with those exact earlobes, laughing, teasing Ward. She wonders, if things had been different, whether or not this man would have been her brother-in-law. If they would have gotten together at family Christmases and joked together. The unnamed Ward certainly seems to have a sense of humour.

     Things aren’t like that, Skye reminds herself. They never can be, not for her.

     “I’m just gonna call you Dickhead, then,” she says. “Where are you taking me, Dickhead?”

     “You might be grateful when we get there,” Dickhead tells her. “I’m taking you to your daughter.”

     Skye thinks, _finally_ , and she lets herself relax, slumping backwards onto the ground. “Well, you’ll have to carry me, Dickhead. I was in a car crash two days ago.”

     Dickhead just shrugs, and then he bends down and picks her up. Skye clings onto his shoulders and, if she closes her eyes, she can imagine that it’s Ward, holding her. That she’s safe, if only for a few seconds.

     She pushes thoughts of Ward and his weirdass family tree out of her mind. She fills herself with Hanna, until she hears her daughter’s name in every breath. This is her chance, and she’s not going to let it slip by.

***

A man pushes open the door of Hanna’s room. He’s holding a cupcake.

     “Here you go,” he says nervously. He sets it on the table in front of her and then takes several fast steps backwards.

     Hanna stares at the cupcake. It’s vanilla, with pink icing and a smiling M&Ms face. “Is this for me?”

     The man nods.

     “Are you going to take me for a walk?” Hanna asks. “Raina promised.”

     “Don’t you want a cupcake instead?”

     “Nope,” Hanna says firmly. This man is dumb. “I want a walk. In fresh air.”

     “Does the boat make you feel sick?” the man asked carefully.

     Hanna thinks about it. She doesn’t feel sick on boats – not ever – but if she says yes, will the man take her outside? “I want fresh air,” she says decisively, and tugs on her red leggings with the white spots a little bit. “Also I want to pee. Right now.”

     That seems to make up the man’s mind. “We’ll pass the toilets on our way to the deck,” he decides. He points to Hanna’s cupcake. “Are you sure you don’t want it?”

     “I’ll have an accident!” Hanna threatens. She presses her thighs together and dances from side to side, because she really does need to pee and this man is not opening the door and she doesn’t want to pee on her red leggings _or_ her boots. “Hurry up.”

     He does hurry. He looks scared, and he opens the door and Hanna rushes out and down the hall, because she knows where the bathroom is by now.

     The man stands guard outside while she pees. She can’t reach the taps above the sink to wash her hands, so she figures maybe it doesn’t matter just this once and she wipes her palms on her leggings in case there are germs and then she bounces out of the room.

     “Please will you take me outside now?”

     It surprises her, when the man shows her the way – up, up, up the stairs, and then through a long corridor, and then through a big glass door, and _oh_ , it’s cold and windy and it bites at Hanna’s face. She loves it.

     “Ready to come in yet?” the man asks.

   Hanna looks around the deck. There are railings everywhere, and a big bucket full of water in one spot, beside a mop, like maybe someone’s been mopping. She goes to stand beside the bucket. The railing is just a little bit higher than her head.

     “Nearly,” she tells the man. She reaches up to put her hands flat on the wooden surface of the railing. The ship goes up and down, up and down, making a _whoosh_ noise. Hanna thinks, _up_ and then she thinks _down_ and then just when she thinks _up_ again, she puts her foot on the rim of the bucket and springs up and over the railing.

     She knocks the bucket over, and water goes everywhere, and the man yells, but then Hanna is in the air and she’s falling. She doesn’t know how far away the water is. She tries to point herself like a straight arrow the way May taught her but it’s hard, when she’s falling, and she’s not sure which way is up.

     She hits the water with a _smack_ , feet first, and her skin tingles but she’s okay, nothing is broken. The waves are big and huge. Hanna’s shoes make her sink, but that’s okay too. She knows how to do this.

     She opens her eyes underwater but it’s hard to see anything except for the big white shape of the boat. She swims _away_ from that, and then she doggy paddles until she’s tired. She tries to pop her head up to see land, but the waves are too high.

     Hanna needs to breathe, and rest, so she rolls over to float on her back. She balances her shoes out by keeping her chest up, spreads out her arms and legs, and purses her lips to get as much air as possible without water. When she’s ready to swim again, she rolls over and sets off.

     She’s floating with a wave when she gets up high, and sees the green in the distance which is definitely an island. Hanna doesn’t think it’s very far away. She can swim that far, she tells herself. No problem.

     The waves, though, are getting bigger, and the sun in the distance is getting smaller. The water is very very cold.

     _Swim_ , Hanna tells herself, and she swims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if that counts as a cliffhanger or not. Whatever.
> 
> In other news, I've recently started my first fic for a different fandom (*legasp*) and I want to point out how super awesome the AoS fans are because we are just super awesome. And stuff. Yep. Yep. Yay! :D
> 
> Votes on a name for the youngest Ward brother? I have a few strong contenders in mind, but I'd like to see what y'all think.


	10. On The Boat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, it has been SO LONG since I updated this story! I'm so sorry! The show changed so dramatically that I was just too busy watching that to bother writing anything about it! I do hate to leave things unfinished, though, so I'd like this fic to get some closure. Maybe then I can write some more stuff set in the new AoS season - although I feel like the ship has sailed on Skyeward, honestly. How sad is that?!?
> 
> Anyway, I hope you can all get back into this series and hopefully it will be finished by the end of the month. Haha, yeah right. But I'll try to get it all wrapped up! 
> 
> Oh, and for those who are fans of lots of my fics, here's a quick warning that Happy Families and Coping Mechanism are about to be deleted. I don't feel like the muse is there for me to be able to finish that series, and because I hate unfinished things, I'd rather just take them down for now. I will always have the original versions on my computer, though, so I can put them back up if some day that becomes necessary - I don't think it will. So if you have some final goodbyes you'd like to say to those two fics, now's the time! :)
> 
> Thanks so much for everyone who is still invested in Hanna and reading it after so long! I love you guys.

Hanna doesn’t remember when she first learnt to swim; probably because, although she doesn’t know it, she was only an infant at the time. For her, swimming is as easy as walking, and so she ploughs through the waves with determination, flipping over to float on her back any time she wants a breather.

     The waves slop over her and get in her mouth and her eyes when she floats on her back, but Hanna just closes her eyes and spits out the waves and it’s okay, she’s doing okay. She’s not near the land yet, but she’s okay.

     The boat has disappeared, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because now Raina is far away, but it’s a bad thing because Hanna can’t decide to go back if she wants to. It’s just ocean around her. She can keep swimming.

***

_Hanna’s first word is “Mama,” and she repeats it incessantly for the weeks afterwards. Her entire vocabulary consists of that single word. It’s the only way she knows how to communicate._

_One day, Trip crouches down beside her. Hanna looks at him solemnly and says, “Mama?”_

_Trip says, “Mama,” back to her._

_Hanna beams, and gives a gurgling, cackling laugh, and claps her chubby hands together, because for the first time someone else is speaking her language._

***

Skye still feels like crap when they arrive at the airfield, and the bumping of the plane doesn’t help. She sits next to Dickhead, who pilots calmly through a storm and down into what looks like the middle of the ocean.

     “You can’t land here,” Skye says.

     “Be quiet,” Dickhead tells her. “This is hard.”

     Skye looks out of the window at the waves and thinks of the last time she was in a plane this small; with a world-renowned superhero and a beefy Albanian man. That time, Hanna had been with her – well, sort of. She’d been quite heavily pregnant.

     There’s a boat underneath them, Skye realises suddenly. That’s where they’re landing.

     Dickhead is just as good a pilot as his older brother. He climbs out of the plane quite cheerfully after they touch down, and comes around to Skye’s side.

     “I can walk,” she tells him scornfully.

     “Suit yourself,” Dickhead says. To his credit, he does catch her after she takes two steps and falls sideways.

     “It’s just… moving a lot,” Skye tries to excuse herself. She wonders what she must look like to this man. Probably she looks as bad as she feels, after dressing as a prostitute, sitting in a car for days, crashing, sitting in another car, and crashing again. She’s still only wearing paper hospital clothes.

     “Yeah, boats do that,” Dickhead smiles. He hoists Skye into his arms again.

     “So, if you’re the younger brother, why aren’t you on Ward’s side?”

     “I am,” he says. “Hydra is Grant’s side.”

     “Not anymore.”

     “Yeah, I heard you gave him a change of heart. It doesn’t matter to me much, anyway. I just go where I’m told. It makes life a bit easier if you just sit back and don’t argue, you know?”

     “Riiiight,” Skye drawls. “So, you don’t interfere. Even when they kidnap your niece?”

     Dickhead looks down at her sharply, but they get inside just then and Raina is there.

     “Skye,” she says magnanimously, sweeping towards them. “ _So_ good to see you.”

     “Where’s my kid, Flowers?”

     Raina snorts somewhat indelicately. “Who do you think you are – Garrett?”

     “Nah,” Skye says, “but I’m fully prepared to go all ‘psycho-gorilla’ like him if you don’t give me Hanna.”

     “Well that’s just it,” Raina says. “I have no use for Hanna – never did. She’s too filtered, too… human. You, on the other hand – well, you’re exactly what I wanted. I took the child because I knew you’d come after her, and now here you are.”

     Skye’s not sure what to say to this. Her head is pounding. The ceaseless up-and-down of the ship is driving her insane and she thinks she might puke, so she does the only thing she can do.

     She makes sure she’s facing Raina when she throws up.

***

They’ve tracked Raina as far as the docks, and now Ward paces anxiously, staring out at the sea, wondering where they are.

     “She’s got a boat,” Trip calls, running over from the man he’s been talking to, “but the guy can’t tell me what kind of boat or where they were headed. He just knows he saw Raina here with some men. Mercenaries, probably.”

     “So we get a boat,” Ward says. “Or we get a plane, or we search on satellites – I don’t care what, but we have to do _something_ to find them.”

***

They’ve cleaned Skye up, given her clothes and painkillers and put her in a sterilised white room with a single white bed in the middle. She keeps away from the bed.

     Her head is still hurting, but it’s a dull ache now, after all the drugs. She’s seen Dickhead peering through the window into her room twice, but he hasn’t come in. Neither has Raina. There seems to be some kind of commotion going on, and Skye hears people yelling about finding ‘the kid’ and all she can think is that they’ve killed Hanna, they’ve hurt Hanna.

     As it turns out, they’ve lost Hanna. Raina comes into the room and explains that her daughter jumped over the side of the ship an hour ago. Skye feels her knees buckle.

     “Sorry about that,” Raina says, “but now we can get down to business.”

     Skye hardly hears her. She’s picturing her baby, out there in the growing dark, alone and cold and scared and lost. How long can Hanna swim in this freezing water in these conditions? Two hours? Three? Has she already slipped beneath the waves?

     “Why don’t you just kill me,” Skye says numbly. “Do it now, if you’re going to do it.”

     “Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” Raina smiles. “You’re much more valuable to me alive. Now then. Do you know what happened to your mother?”

     In the past five years, since Hanna has been born, Skye has learnt a lot about her past – a lot that she didn’t want to know. She says, “Yes,” but her mind is still elsewhere, with her daughter.

     Raina talks for a long time and Skye hears about twenty percent of it. “Her blood, as it turned out, was the solution … cycled through his system but … an imperfect, temporary solution … my creatures, of course, are … and so I thought, but …”

     “Just stop talking,” Skye says thickly, dully. “I don’t want a big speech about your evil plans. Just do whatever it is you’re going to do to me.”

     “I suppose it makes it easier that you’ve done this already,” Raina muses, mostly to herself. Then she leans closer and speaks slowly, trying to make sure Skye will understand. “You’re going to have a baby, Skye. A very special baby. With very special DNA.” She smiles, and narrows her eyes at the same time, and Skye wishes there was something left in her stomach so that she could throw up again, because there’s a wave of rising nausea in her throat.

     “You’re sick,” she tells Raina. “You’re twisted, you’re creepy, you’re just plain weird.”

     “I’d like to say that there’s going to be an alien sperm donor, just to upset you, but what I’m planning is a lot more complicated than that,” Raina says. There’s no shame at all in her face or voice, just curiosity and childlike enthusiasm for her plans. “I think, though, that it would probably be better if you were asleep for this bit. You’ve got enough to be mulling over, anyway.”

     Skye doesn’t think about her parents, or a baby with alien DNA. She thinks about Hanna when they put the needle in her arm and knock her out.

***

_Hanna walks into the lounge room one day when she is two and sees a washing basket full of clothes. She points at it._

_“Can I climb in that basket?”_

_“No,” Skye says, “there are clothes in that basket.”_

_Hanna thinks about this for a moment, and then she toddles over to the basket and tips the clothes out. “Now there aren’t clothes in it,” she says, and looks up at Skye expectantly._

_Skye doubles over and bursts into laughter._

***

Hanna is actually surprised when she kicks out with her foot and hits a rock. She says, “What?” before she remembers that no one can hear her.

     A wave goes in her mouth, so she spits it out and then she reaches for the rock with her hands, and past the rock there are more rocks, and when she crouches and looks past _those_ rocks, she sees a beach with real sand and little green bushes and everything.

     She’s not far from the beach. Her arms hurt, and her legs hurt, and her chest hurt, and the salty water is stinging her eyes, but seeing a beach gives Hanna fresh hope. She kicks off from the rocks and surges forward, and she bumps into other rocks, and one of them scratches her leg, and one of them bruises her tummy, but she swims as fast as she can and suddenly she’s on the sand.

     Hanna’s too tired to look around. She crawls up the beach on hands and knees and collapses, face-down on the sand, as soon as she’s out of the water.

     There’s a cool wind blowing in this place, wherever it is. Hanna shivers a lot. She’d been shivering in the water, too, but she’d been swimming so much that she hadn’t felt cold. Now, though, she’s really very cold.

     Maybe if she stands up and walks around, she’ll find a house with some warm jumpers or a bath. Hanna would like a bath, and she’d like someone to brush the snarls out of her hair, and wrap her up in a fluffy towel and put her to bed with warm blankets.

     The only thing past the beach is trees and more trees, but at least they block the wind a little bit. Hanna finds a big tree and she curls up tight against the trunk. After a moment’s thought, she takes off her wet shirt, too, and she tries to squeeze all the water out of it and then she spreads it out on the ground to dry.

     She’s so cold. Her chest hurts from the cold.

     It’s not warm enough, curling up here, and so Hanna picks up her shirt and walks further into the trees. Her feet are bare, because she took her boots off while she was swimming to try and make it easier. Her feet are cold.

     There’s some grass, and after some time the grass is long, up to Hanna’s waist. She thinks that this might keep her warm, and so she pretends she’s a dog and she turns around in four circles – one, two, three, four, like that – and then she curls up in the grass and she pulls grass over her body and over her feet and it’s not warm but it’s not windy here, either.

     Hanna closes her eyes and tells herself it’s time to sleep, just like Mummy always tells her. She wishes Mummy was here right now, right this second. She thinks that after she sleeps, it will be daytime and her shirt will be dry and she can put it back on to keep warm and go find Mummy. Everything will be okay.

     Something howls. It’s a big howl, a long howl, a howl that shakes up and down. Hanna’s eyes shoot back open.

     If the howling thing wants to eat her then she doesn’t know what she can do about it. Firmly, she forces her eyes closed again, and thinks that if she sleeps then it will be okay. She doesn’t think about howling things (wolves? No, don’t think about it) and she doesn’t think about rustling things (bears? Or snakes? Don’t think about it, _don’t_ ) and she doesn’t think about Raina (is she chasing me) and she doesn’t think about anything at all except for Mummy. She thinks very hard about Mummy, because thinking about Mummy makes her feel safe.

***

_Hanna climbs into Skye’s bed one morning when she is three years old and holds out her thumb. “Mummy, look.”_

_Bleary-eyed, Skye struggles to prop herself up on her elbows and look. “What is it, baby?”_

_“My thumb.”_

_“What happened to it?”_

_“He bit it.”_

_“Who bit it?”_

_“Rabbity bit it.”_

_“Who is Rabbity?”_

_“He climbed into my bed in the middle of the night when it was dark and I was sleeping and he bit my thumb. I’m bleeding, look.”_

_She’s not bleeding. There is a red mark, though, as if she’s hit something sharp. “Are you sure someone bit you?”_

_“Yes, Mummy, I’m absolutely sure. It happened when I was sleeping.”_

_“Was it a dream?”_

_“No, it was Rabbity.”_

_Hanna’s tired, and close to tears, and Skye’s exhausted and wants to laugh, so she doesn’t say any more about it. She reaches for Hanna and tucks her close to her body and murmurs, “Poor baby, poor darling,” and kisses Hanna’s thumb and her cheeks and her nose and her eyelids until her tired, dreaming daughter falls back to sleep._


	11. Dog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a REALLY long one.

It’s Fitz’s voice in Ward’s ear, directing him. Trip is in the co-pilot seat beside him, and the tiny plane is spiralling through the air, being smacked carelessly around by the wind.

     Ward hardly notices it. He flies without stopping to think and it’s easier that way, because he doesn’t have to try and remember. He just stares straight ahead, through the rain and the wind and the crashing waves and searches for a boat.

     Trip, beside him, is grim-faced, hands gripping the edge of the seat. The rest of the team is in the jet. They’d gone to the Academy to pick up Fitzsimmons, which means they’re now almost an hour away from Trip and Ward.

     It’s just luck, really, that Fitz is reachable. From the sounds of it, he’s set up about eight different computer monitors and is using the satellite feed of the area to guide Ward and Trip towards one tiny boat in the middle of a storming ocean.

     The boat isn’t actually that far away from shore, Fitz claims. It’s small, though, and it’s keeping out of the way of any known shipping paths. It’s been drifting around the same area for days. It has to be Raina.

     Ward doesn’t care about it being Raina. He just wants it to be Skye.

***

Hanna wakes up and there’s a bear. It’s sleeping next to her, with brown fur and snuffly breaths.

     “Bear!” Hanna yelps, and she struggles to move backwards, curls up in a tight ball and closes her eyes because she doesn’t want to see herself get eaten.

     The bear doesn’t eat her. Instead, it comes over and starts licking her face.

     Hanna opens her eyes.

     The dog, who is certainly big and bear-like but much more friendly, gives a happy bark. He spreads his legs and wags his tail.

     “Oh,” Hanna mutters. She’s embarrassed, just a little bit. She holds out her hand for the dog to sniff, and then she scratches behind its ears, like she might with Tessie. “Hello, dog.”

     The dog barks again. He’s a big dog, with floppy ears and a wet black nose. His brown eyes are very shiny. Hanna wonders how long he’s been with her in the night. She thinks maybe he cuddled up to keep her warm. “Thanks, dog.”

     She searches for her shirt, after that, but she can’t find it. The dog finds it first, and it’s all wet still and screwed up in a ball. The dog picks it up and looks pleased.

     “That’s my shirt,” Hanna tells him. “I need it back.”

     The dog ignores her. He starts to chew on her shirt.

     “Hey!”

     That makes him look up, and he grins, whole body wagging with his tail, eyes shining. He drops the shirt and lets his tongue hang out, and then he turns around and starts to run away.

     Hanna doesn’t want to let him leave. She grabs her wet, dog-spit shirt and yells, “Wait for me, dog!”

***

At first, Skye doesn’t understand why Raina is looming over her. She blinks a couple of times and then everything comes flooding back.

     “Get lost,” she says wearily.

     “Welcome back.” Raina smiles, sweetly, and adds, “You look like you needed the rest.”

     Skye has been in constant pain for so many days now that she hardly notices any more. Pain has becoming boring, and normal. “How are your plans for being a psycho bitch coming?”

     “Actually, it’s all going surprisingly well,” Raina says. “Did you know, by the way?”

     “Know what?”

     “That you were pregnant.”

     Skye gapes, open-mouthed. “What now?”

     “Yes, we ran a check before we implanted the new embryo. So you’re going to have twins, I suppose. Congratulations.”

     Skye swears. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

     “What? Implanting a second embryo? Not dangerous to you, don’t worry.”

     “I’m not worried about me,” Skye says. She makes a conscious effort to keep her hands at her sides, not to look down at herself, but her thoughts are whirling. How long had she been pregnant for, without realising it? She’d been so careful, after Hanna. An accidental pregnancy isn’t easy at the best of times, after all, let alone when you’re trying to be an active field agent with a young child already.

     “You’re special, Skye,” Raina says, touching her cheek. “You’re not like _them_. They’re unevolved. You – and me – we’re something better.”

     “Go to hell,” Skye spits, and then there’s a horrific banging, scraping sound from somewhere above her head.

     Raina looks horrified. She crosses with fast, quick steps to the door and bolts it shut.

***

Ward doesn’t land well and the plane skids across the deck of the boat.

     “Ouch,” Trip winces.

     “Shut up,” Ward says.

     They vault out of the plane simultaneously on opposite sides and their guns are firing before they hit the ground.

***

The dog seems to be waiting for Hanna to catch up. He wants her to follow him, probably.

     Dogs are smart. Hanna knows that, because lots of people have told her so, like Mummy and Daddy and Aunty Jemma. She wants a dog, but no one will buy her a puppy. Not while they have Tessie, Mummy says. Tessie is too much work.

     Hanna thinks that maybe this dog wants to be her dog. She thinks she should give him a name.

     “Sammy,” she says, and the dog turns around to look at her. He lifts up his floppy ears a little bit, so Hanna thinks he probably likes his name.

     She keeps following him, even when the trees get thick and the ground gets stony and cuts her feet.

***

“My team’s here,” Skye says. She knows it with a certainty that feels like relief. They always come for her. She’s so freaking lucky.

     “I’d like to see them try and get into this room,” Raina snaps. Her confident façade is cracking, just a little. “We can wait them out in here for as long as it takes.”

     “Are you sure?” Skye asks. “I can’t help but notice that there’s not a toilet in this room.”

***

Someone’s trying to talk to Ward. He shakes the voice off. He’s busy taking potshots at any of Raina’s men sticking their heads above the upper deck’s railings.

     Most of them don’t seem too willing to poke their heads up, actually. It makes Ward think that Raina isn’t doing a very good job of inspiring loyalty amongst her new people. They’re not willing to die with her.

     “Should have stuck with Hydra,” he mutters aloud.

     “Good god, Ward!” Trip exclaims. “This is _not_ the time for a change of heart.”

     Ward glances over at the other man and almost laughs. It’s a mistake. He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off the railings. One of Raina’s soldiers, braver than the rest, rises up and fires off a single shot.

     Everything slows down, and neither of them quite realise the bullet has hit Trip until the blood starts to blossom and he goes down from the force of it, thumping backwards onto the metal deck of the ship.

***

Hanna gets a bit nervous when she sees the house. It’s silly, because she’s been wanting to see a house or some people or some nice warm blankets ever since she crawled out of the ocean. Now that she does see the house, though, she’s scared.

     Sammy the dog isn’t scared. He trots through the garden with his tail held high. Hanna thinks that maybe he lives here. She crouches in some bushes at the edge of the lawn and peeks out through the leaves, watching Sammy carefully.

     He goes up to the door and barks, and someone opens it. They have their head turned over their shoulder, saying something to another person behind them, but there’s lots of blond hair falling everywhere. It’s a lady. That makes Hanna feel a little safer, but only a little, because Raina is a lady too.

     Hanna’s shivering. It’s starting to hurt her teeth from all the chattering, but she’s still not ready to move. She doesn’t want them to see her. It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because Sammy the dog finishes greeting the lady and bounds right back over to Hanna. He puts his nose in her face and wags his tail and then turns around and barks gleefully at the lady.

     “Shh,” Hanna whispers. “She’s gonna find me.”

     Sammy doesn’t care. He barks again, and the lady looks confused, and then she starts walking towards the bush, towards Hanna.

     Hanna takes and deep breath and closes her hands into fists. If that lady tries to hurt her, she’s going to get a very nasty surprise.

***

Skye hates having to just sit down here and listen to all the shots. Raina is standing by the door, listening to everything that’s going on outside. Her eyes are huge.

     While she’s distracted, Skye searches the room. There’s not a lot in here that she can use. She’s sitting on a hospital gurney in the middle of the room and her left wrist is strapped down. The strap is tight, and painful. It’s too thick for Skye to be able to wriggle her hand out, even if she took a leaf from May’s book and dislocated something (her thumb, probably. It’s usually her thumb). There isn’t even a stereotypical tray of medical tools nearby so that she could snatch a scalpel and carve her way free. It doesn’t help that there’s still a god-awful pounding in Skye’s head and she’s dizzy and nauseous.

     Her right arm is itching under the cast. Skye rests it in her lap and wonders if the plaster is heavy enough for her to use it as a weapon. If she smashed the cast into Raina’s head… well then she’d still be strapped to a gurney in a locked room with a fractured skull and a broken arm. So not a good plan, then.

     It all comes down to the damn strap, Skye thinks, and she looks at her hand. The cuff is thick, padded fabric. It’s buckled tightly around her wrist. When she pulls, her hand barely moves. It’s so tight on her wrist that it’s actually cutting off blood supply.

     Maybe, Skye thinks, that’s the plan. She angles her wrist, pushing down against the strap so that it presses even more tightly across the inside of her wrist.

     Somewhere above her, there’s an explosion.

***

Ward pulls the pin of the grenade between his teeth and throws it overarm at the metal door blocking his path. There’s a boom, reverberated through the bowels of the ship, and the door crumples like tin foil.

     “Fitz!” Ward yells, spitting the pin as he talks. “I need backup _now_.”

     “Yeah, well,” Fitz says, “the Cavalry’s on her way. I mean, the rest of us are coming too, but… mostly her.”

     Ward closes his eyes. It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but maybe with May here he’ll stand a chance.

     He leaves Trip’s body on the deck.

***

The girl comes out of the bush swinging, tiny fists flying fiercely. She looks like a wild child, some strange creature that the forest has spat out here for people to find. She’s wearing nothing but a pair of leggings, which look like they might once have been red but are now covered in mud and pine needles. Her hair is all thick brown curls and her eyes are big and brown too. She’s waif-like, skinny, with a brave face but tearstains on her cheeks.

     “Whoa,” the woman says, and she makes as if to catch the child’s fists.

     The girl dodges. She gets in one well-placed punch to the side of the woman’s gut – strong, too – and then she hurtles past the woman, towards the house.

   The woman straightens up and yells, “Hunter!”

***

“So, my hand’s going purple,” Skye says conversationally. “I think you did this thing too tight.”

     Raina turns around and stares as if she’s forgotten Skye was in the room. “What?”

     Skye wonders if the other woman is losing it. “The cuff. My wrist.”

     Absently, Raina wanders over to take a look. “You’ll never find the city,” she tells Skye. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

     “Okay,” Skye agrees, because apparently Raina can’t handle the pressure and has cracked and gone insane. “We’ll never find it.” She wiggles her fingers, drawing Raina’s attention back to her bound hand. It is, actually, purple. Well, it’s almost purple.

     Raina bends over Skye’s hand, to take a look or maybe loosen the cuff or something. Skye grabs the back of Raina’s hair in her right hand and yanks Raina’s head up, and then down, where her face connects hard with Skye’s knee.

     Skye doesn’t have enough strength in her broken arm to do major damage, but she forces her knee up at the same time and apparently the contact with the bone is hard enough to make Raina’s nose and mouth start bleeding.

     Raina snaps upright and glares at Skye. She ignores the blood trickling down her face; it doesn’t seem to bother her.

     “If I didn’t know you were one of the evolved, I’d kill you for that,” Raina says.

     “Maybe we’ll both get lucky and someone will kill _you_ ,” Skye retorts. “It sounds like most of your men upstairs are gone.”

     Raina laughs. It’s a genuine, if slightly maniacal laugh. “You think _they_ were my last line of defence? Pathetic. They’re mercenaries, and _human_ besides.”

     “You’re not human?”

     “I’m better than human, Skye,” Raina tells her. “And so are you.”

***

A man steps out of the doorway of the house and grabs Hanna around her middle, lifting her off the ground. She kicks.

     “Let me go!”

     He laughs. “You’re a feisty one.”

     His voice distracts Hanna briefly, because he has an accent that she likes. “What’s that?”

     “What?”

     “Your accent?”

     “I’m English, love,” the man says, and then he asks, “If I put you down, will you try to run away?”

     Hanna considers it. “It depends. Are you a baddie?”

     “Nope.”

     “Are you sure?”

     The man laughs again and puts Hanna down on the ground. He crouches down so that they’re eye-to-eye and holds out his hand for her to shake. “I’m Lance Hunter.”

     Hanna shakes his hand because it’s good manners. “I’m Hanna.”

     The woman comes running over to them, then, when she sees that Hanna has stopped fighting. She pushes past Hunter into the house, and then she comes back out again a second later with a huge brown coat in her hands.

     “You must be freezing,” she tells Hanna, and throws the coat around her shoulders, kneeling on the floor to zip it up. It’s a big coat, a grown-up’s coat, and it goes down past Hanna’s knees. The sleeves come down so far that her hands disappear and the big hood flops over her eyes. Hanna giggles.

     “You’ve hidden her, Bobbi,” Hunter says. “There’s nothing left but coat.”

     That makes Hanna giggle again, and when the woman called Bobbi pushes the hood out of her eyes, Hanna sees that the lady is smiling too. “Hunter’s funny,” Hanna says.

     “Sometimes,” Bobbi agrees. She holds Hanna’s hands and starts rolling up the sleeves of the big coat. “You’re Hanna?”

     “Yes,” Hanna says, because she is.

     “Skye’s Hanna?”

     That makes Hanna’s eyes go wide and big. Skye is Mummy. “Do you know Mummy?” she asks.

    “I’ve only met her once,” Bobbi says.

     “We’re SHIELD, Hanna,” Hunter adds. “It’s all right now.”

     Hanna is so pleased that it makes her legs feel a bit wobbly and tired. She holds out her arms to Bobbi for a hug, and after a second, Bobbi picks her up and hugs her.

     “It’s okay, Hanna,” she says. “You’re safe with us.”

***

Ward is hurtling down the corridors when he runs smack into his baby brother, who is running fast in the other direction.

     They smash foreheads together and both recoil backwards, blinking hard.

     “Holy shit,” the man says, “Grant?”

     Something inside Ward’s head twinges. Yes, he knows this is his brother, but he’s struggling to recall details. He can’t remember the man’s name.

     The brother is taller than Ward is, with bigger shoulders and a thicker neck. His hair is thick, smooth and black.

     “You’ve grown up a lot,” Ward says, because it feels like the right thing to say.

     “It happens to us all,” the man agrees. “Why are you here?”

     “Taking down Raina,” Ward explains. “Why are you here?”

     “Got hired by Raina.”

     Ward frowns. “What?”

     “I guess that was you I was shooting at earlier. Sorry.”

     Ward thinks about the single dark head who was brave enough to stand up and shoot Trip. “You hit my…” _friend,_ his brain completes, but his mouth can’t say it. “You hit another agent,” he says instead.

     “Sorry,” the man says.

     “You killed him,” Ward continues.

     “Well, that’s always an option in our line of work.”

     There’s a massive wave of anger building inside Ward’s chest, and suddenly it explodes. “Goddamnit, Thomas!” he yells, and he swings his fist towards his brother’s jaw. _Thomas_. Now he remembers.

     Thomas catches Ward’s fist in his hand. He smiles, dryly, although it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not any more, brother,” he says. “People don’t hit me any more. Especially not my big brothers. Understand?”

     Ward doesn’t, not really. “I hit you?” He pauses. “I don’t remember,” he adds uncertainly.

     “Yeah, so I’ve heard,” Thomas says.

     Ward’s head is hurting. He’s about to say something else – what? – when he hears the bang from downstairs. “Skye,” he says instead. He makes as if to go past Thomas and his brother puts a hand on his shoulder.

     “I’ll see you around, then, Grant.”

     “Where are you going?”

     Thomas laughs. “Gonna leave before the Cavalry arrives.” He claps his hand on Ward’s shoulder, a brotherly pat of affection. “Try to screw your head back on right, Grant. It wasn’t fair, what they did to your brain.”

     “It was my decision,” Ward says automatically.

     “Sure, that’s what they tell you,” Thomas agrees.

     Ward doesn’t have time for this. He has to get to Skye. He shoves past the other man and this time, Thomas lets him go.

***

Raina gets scared, after the sounds from upstairs stop. She pulls back the bolt on the door with a screech and a bang, and peers around the edge. Apparently comforted, she steps back inside and slides the bolt into place.

     “This is a safe room,” she tells Skye. “They’re not going to be able to blow this door with any grenades.”

     Skye’s clumsy right-hand fingers fumble over the cuff on her wrist but she can’t unlatch it, not without the key. She needs a damn knife.

     There’s a thump from outside the door. Ward’s voice, muffled through the thick metal, yells Skye’s name.

     “In here!” she yells back. “Blow the door or something!” She’s getting a bit stir-crazy.

     Very calmly, Raina says, “Agent Ward. Stop playing with your explosive toys and listen to me. The only way Skye is getting out of this room is if we bargain; so let’s bargain, before your friends arrive and try to take me into custody.”

     There’s a pause from outside, and then Ward says, “I’m listening.”

***

Inside the house, everything is warm. Bobbi takes Hanna and gives her a bath, to wash the salt and sweat and mud from her skin and hair.

     “I like baths,” Hanna says.

     “Should I wash your hair?” Bobbi asks her.

     Hanna nods yes, and Bobbi lathers her hands with shampoo and reaches for Hanna’s head.

     When she picks up the showerhead and goes to rinse it, Hanna reminds her, “You have to say ‘eyes closed and head back’ otherwise I might forget and water will go in my eyes.”

     “Okay,” Bobbi agrees. “Sure.” She says it, but she doesn’t sound very convinced.

     “Do you have any children?” Hanna asks.

     “None.”

     “Are you and Hunter married?”

     “Not anymore.”

     Hanna thinks about that for a minute. “You used to be married?”

     “A few years ago.”

     “Why did you stop?”

     Bobbi shrugs. Her hand is gentle in Hanna’s hair, working her fingers and conditioner through the tangles. “We argued a lot.”

     “Why do you still live together?”

     “Because we’re still friends.”

     “Don’t you argue?”

     “Not so much, lately.”

     “I think my Mummy and Daddy will get married,” Hanna says. “Do you think they’ll argue?”

     “I don’t know,” Bobbi tells her, “but I think they’ll love you lots no matter what.”

     Hanna says, “Hm,” and then she says, “Have you called Coulson yet?”

     Bobbi laughs. “Yes, Hunter did that.”

     “Why do you live here and not at the Playground?”

     “There are SHIELD agents all over the world. We’ve been here for six months, since people started seeing Raina and some of her creatures around.”

     “Like Tessie.”

     “Who’s Tessie?”

     “An octoseal,” Hanna says matter-of-factly.

     Bobbi probably doesn’t know what an octoseal is. She looks confused and goes quiet, and Hanna laughs.

     After her bath she gets to put the big warm brown coat back on. They don’t have any underpants for her, and her leggings are dirty, but Bobbi finds some shorts and puts them around Hanna’s hips and ties up the loose parts with a hairband. The coat is so big that it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s like a dress, not a coat.

     “That’s my coat,” Hunter says, when Hanna trips back into the lounge wearing it. “Are you planning on keeping it?”

     “Yes,” Hanna says decisively. “When is Coulson coming?”

     “As soon as he can,” Bobbi promises.

     The dog comes into the room, and Hanna drops to her knees to give him a hug. “What’s this dog called?”

     “Bother,” Hunter says.

     “That’s a silly name,” Hanna laughs.

     “He likes to bother everyone. He’s always trying to be near people. That’s probably why he went and found you.”

     Hanna kisses Bother on the nose and then she climbs up onto the couch and sits next to Hunter with her legs sticking out. “Will Mummy be with Coulson?”

     “I think Coulson’s coming first,” Bobbi says. “Your mum will come after.”

     That makes Hanna feel cold inside, even though she’s warm underneath the snuggly coat. She wants Mummy to come right away.

***

“You can take Skye and leave, provided I keep my ship and everything on it intact,” Raina states plainly. “That’s all I’m offering, so don’t try anything else.”

     “I don’t want to haggle,” Ward says, muffled behind the door. “I want my family.”

     “The thing is,” Raina muses, “once I release Skye I only have your word as my safety guarantee.”

     “I keep promises.”

     “I actually find that very difficult to believe, Agent Ward, knowing your previous history – and previous versions of yourself – as well as I do.”

     Skye moves her leg around so that she’s sitting on the other side of the gurney, beside her bound hand. She puts her thumb beneath her knee and presses down. Nothing happens. The angle is wrong. If she’s going to dislocate anything, Skye needs her right hand to do it. Her right hand is screwed. She’s basically screwed.

     “Send Skye out and I’ll leave the ship,” Ward says. He sounds frustrated.

     Raina’s still thinking about it. “Actually,” she tells him, “I think I’ll just wait it out.”

     There’s a moment’s silence while Ward thinks. “All right, how’s this for a bargain,” he says eventually. “You stay in there and I’ll go looking for all the monsters you’re breeding on this ship. I’ll shoot them one-by-one. I’ll destroy anything and everything I find. Your precious research, Raina, all gone.”

     “I doubt it,” Raina says. “If you can’t make it through this door, you won’t make it through any of the others. This room is designed to be completely safe.”

     Of course, it’s at that precise moment that someone blows a hole in the side of the hull.

***

Ward hears the explosion at the same time that May says in his ear; “Stand down, we’ve got her.”

     He sinks to his knees for a second, weak with relief, and then forces himself up. “Open the door,” he says.

     There’s a grinding of metal as someone draws the bolt back and then Skye tumbles out of the door and into Ward’s arms.

     She’s white-faced and sickly, there’s dried blood in her hair and a cast on her arm and she’s wearing a paper-thin gown and a long cardigan. In spite of all this, the first thing she says is, “Jesus, Ward, you look like hell.”

     “Speak for yourself,” Ward tells her. He pulls her close, wanting to just hold her for a minute, but Skye squirms away.

     “No time,” she tells him. “Gotta find Hanna.” She tries to go past him down the corridor, stumbles, and catches herself against the next door along. There’s a window set into it.

     Ward lunges for Skye and finds himself staring into a room that’s been decorated like a nursery. There are cots, and toys, and brightly coloured rugs, and three small children who look like they range in age from about one to five. All three are covered in tiny spikes, thorns, like little porcupines. They’re hairless and big-eyed and sitting in a playpen together.

     “Huh,” Skye says. “Look at that.” Then she quietly passes out.

     Ward holds her up, propped against the door. May pushes Raina past him and he says, “What the hell are they?”

     “Hm?” Raina asks. “Oh, they’re me. Well, not _me_ , obviously, but we’re genetically identical. It’s alien-driven evolution, Ward, it’s not exactly a science. Sometimes nature gets it wrong. It’s always better to test these things before you unleash them on yourself. Isn’t it lucky I did?”

***

When they bring Hanna to Mummy, she’s sleeping, stretched out on her bunk in the Bus.

     “Mummy,” Hanna whispers. She touches Mummy’s face, and, like magic, Mummy opens her eyes.

     “Hanna?” she murmurs, like she can’t quite believe it. Then she starts to cry.

     Hanna climbs up onto the bed and curls up against Mummy’s side. She puts her head on Mummy’s chest and listens to her heartbeat. “I’m glad I found you,” she says.

     “Me too,” Mummy sobs. “Don’t ever leave me again, okay?”

     “Well, only if I get kidnapped,” Hanna says.

     “No way,” Mummy promises.

     She hugs Hanna for a long, long time and doesn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just had to slip Bobbi and Hunter in there somewhere! And yes, Trip's demise is unfortunately a reality in this fic as well :( I felt like keeping some of the major themes of season 2 in here, especially since I watched so much before continuing the fic! Haha, whoops. 
> 
> This chapter wraps up the general plot, but there will be a fairly short epilogue, just a nice happy fluffy one, because this series has had all the sadness and angst! 
> 
> Oh, and I meant to say last chapter (but forgot) or the chapter before (but forgot) that Hanna's method of swimming - floating on her back when she gets tired, knowing how to keep herself up with clothes and even shoes etc - is a real swimming survival course that is taught to infants and toddlers and has very impressive results. I only know about it in its Australian form, but I'm sure there's a version in most countries, so I suggest you look it up. It's an awesome program :)


	12. Happy Birthday

When Hanna turns eight, she gets her very first knife from Daddy and a DVD about Australian animals from Jemma. Fitz gives her a stuffed monkey (her third) and Coulson gives her a tiny little red car that’s called Baby Lola. May has found a Hanna-sized SHIELD jacket that is just like May’s, and Bobbi has written an IOU ten fighting lessons, which is great because Hanna likes Bobbi’s way of fighting the best. Billy Koenig gives her a lanyard and Hunter gives her his jacket.

     “That’s already mine,” Hanna tells him. “Since three years ago.”

     “It’s official now,” Hunter explains.

     “This is a terrible present.”

     He laughs when she says that, and promises he’ll get her something better next year.

     Mummy’s present doesn’t come until the afternoon. Hanna’s already watched her DVD, had her first new fighting lesson and she’s wearing her new jacket when Mummy gets home.

     Daddy is playing with Tashie and Nina, since they keep trying to steal Baby Lola. Hanna hears the door open and Mummy yells, “Hanna!”

     Hanna grins. “My present!” she exclaims.

     She takes the slide down to the bottom, because it’s fastest, and she scrambles to get to her feet and run to Mummy. Tessie runs to Mummy at the same time, so they crash into each other.

     “I was here first,” Hanna tells Tessie accusatorily. “Mum, where’s my present!”

     “Don’t be greedy,” Mummy tells her. She bends down to say hi to Tessie. Hanna hops from foot-to-foot with an impatient excitement that she can’t control.

     “Mummy!”

     “Okay,” Mummy laughs. “Are you ready?”

     “Yes,” Hanna begs. She holds out her hands, waiting, and Mummy puts a big box into her arms. It’s _huge_. “It’s huge!” Hanna exclaims. “And heavy!”

     “Do you want to open it down here,” Mummy asks, “or take it upstairs?”

     Hanna considers it. Opening her present here is faster, but upstairs are Daddy and the twins, so maybe she should let them see too. “Upstairs.”

     “It will have to go up the chute,” Mummy warns. “You can’t carry it.”

     “Okay,” Hanna pouts.

     The chute is new, but it was Fitz and Koenig who built it. Hanna thinks that maybe Trip gave them the idea, because she remembers, a long time ago, Trip telling her a story about how he had to carry her up all the ladders when she was a baby. It’s a lot easier now that they have the chute. They put things inside and the things go _whoosh_ all the way up to the top level. Hanna loves it, even if she’s not allowed to ride inside. And she’s not allowed to put her baby sisters inside, either, because she checked. Everyone said _NO_.

     Mummy helps Hanna to put the big box carefully inside the chute, and she makes it go up very slowly, probably so it doesn’t break. Hanna watches it out of the corner of her eye when she climbs all the ropes.

     She takes the box out of the chute at the top and proudly carries it into the lounge room, setting it down in the middle of the floor.

     Tashie shunts over, pushing herself along the carpet with her hands. “What is it?”

     “My present,” Hanna says proudly.

     “Can I see?” Tashie reaches out her hand for the top of the box.

     “No way, Jose!” Hanna pushes her sister’s hand away.

     “I want to see!” Tashie yells. She’s building up for a tantrum, which means she’ll kick things. Hanna quickly puts herself in-between her sister and her present. She doesn’t want Tashie to break it.

     Luckily, Mummy is there. She says, “Natasha,” in her calm quiet voice which means Tashie had better shut up _or else_.

     Tashie shuts up. She always shuts up when Mummy does the scary voice, which sucks because Hanna wants to see what _or else_ looks like.

     Daddy comes over to look at the present too. He’s holding Nina, who has her thumb in her mouth like a baby.

     “All right, watch,” Hanna tells them all. She reaches for the lid of the big box, which has a purple ribbon on the top, and she pulls it off.

     Inside the box, something whimpers.

     Hanna leans forwards to see properly and then she gasps. She takes in such a big breath and she puts her hands up next to her mouth and then she turns around to look at Mummy. “ _Mummy_ ,” she breathes, and she sounds so happy, she’s smiling so big and wide.

     Mummy smiles too. “Aren’t you going to take it out of the box?”

     Carefully, Hanna reaches into the box and she picks up her present with both hands. It’s warm and she can feel its heart going _ba-boom, ba-boom_. It has silky ears and a waggy tail and a happy licky tongue.

     “ _Mummy_ ,” Hanna whispers reverently, “my _puppy_. Oh Mummy, my _puppy_ , see my _puppy_? Tashie, see my _puppy_? It’s _mine_.”

     “You have to look after the puppy,” Daddy says. “You have to feed it, and wash it, and make sure you give it lots of space to run around.”

     “Right,” Mummy agrees. “Also you have to clean up after it when it pees everywhere, okay?”

     “Yes,” Hanna promises. “I can look after my puppy!” She does hesitate, though, and looks out of the open lounge door to the edge of the level. “What if my puppy falls down?”

     “Well,” Daddy says, looking at Mummy, “there _is_ another surprise.”

     “Do I get a present?” Tashie asks immediately.

     “No, that’s not the surprise.”

     Nina pops her thumb out of her mouth to say, “No, me.”

     “No more presents,” Daddy says helplessly. “Just stop and listen to me.”

     “Nina doesn’t get a present,” Tashie says happily.

     Nina puts her thumb back in her mouth and glares at Tashie. She has very dark eyes, like Daddy, and she can give fierce looks like Daddy too. Tashie doesn’t give such fierce looks, but she does fierce kicks. She has the same spiky black hair as Daddy, which is mostly because she gave herself a haircut last week and it isn’t growing back so fast.

     Mummy says the twins aren’t identical but Hanna thinks they look like each other. She thinks they look a bit like her, too, which is good, because sisters are supposed to look the same.

     “What are you going to name your puppy?” Mummy asks Hanna.

     “It’s a girl puppy?” Hanna checks. Mummy nods. “So I’m going to name her… Poots.”

     “Poots?” Mummy says. She starts to laugh.

     Hanna laughs too, because she remembers Mummy telling her how many different names she had. They’d had a bedtime story about it, and Mummy had said how everyone called her Mary-Sue and it was her _worst_ name _ever_.

     “Poots the puppy.” She cuddles her puppy close and it wriggles and kisses her face lots of times. “Mummy I love Poots.”

     Tashie crawls closer. “I can cuddle Poots.”

     “Uh uh,” Hanna says, shaking her head. “You’ll play too rough with her. But you can stroke her. _Gently_.” She holds Poots away from her body and supervises both of her sisters with intense concentration as they reach out chubby hands to stroke the puppy.

     Daddy clears his throat. “Does anyone remember I said there was a second surprise?”

     Mummy elbows him. “Just spit it out.”

     “We’re moving,” Daddy says.

     Hanna looks up at him. “What? That’s not a nice surprise!”

     Tashie crawls even closer. “Can I kiss the puppy?” she asks hopefully.

     “Gentle,” Hanna reminds her. “Daddy, where are we moving? And why?”

     “You remember how I said to you that the Playground was a secret base?”

     Hanna nods. “Uh huh?”

     “Well, a secret base isn’t a good place for children or puppies or even octoseals.”

     “So where do we go?”

     “Somewhere that SHIELD needs us,” Daddy explains. “For now, we’re going to spend a year or two at the Academy. Mummy and I are going to be training some people, which means no more missions for a while.”

     Hanna looks at them and chews on her lip. She thinks maybe no more missions is a sad thing, but that means that Mummy and Daddy won’t leave her so much. “Tashie and Nina are coming too, aren’t they?”

     “Of course,” Mummy laughs. “We wouldn’t leave them. And Hanna, Jemma and Fitz are coming too, okay? Does that make you feel a bit better?”

     Yes, but only a little bit better. “What about Coulson and May and Bobbi and Hunter and BillyKoenig and Mack the Mechanic and-”

     Mummy interrupts. “No one else is coming. Not yet, anyway. But they’ll visit, okay? And like Dad said, it’s only for a year or two. After that, we might go somewhere else, and Coulson might be there, with May, and Bobbi, and Hunter… you get it?”

     “Yeah,” Hanna says. She’s only a little bit sad. She cuddles her puppy tight and gives a brave smile, like she’s supposed to when she’s not sure about something. “It will be an adventure.”

     “Right,” Mummy says, kissing her head. “A really good adventure. But you have to remember to look after your puppy.”

     “And your sisters,” Daddy says.

   “And you’ll still have to train hard,” Mummy adds.

     Hanna thinks about it. “Okay.”

     And that’s when Tashie leans in and tries to bite Poots on the ear and so they all get a bit distracted after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awwwww, all the happy epilogue fluff. Wasn't that nice? Wrapping up the series all neat and peaceful like that. I'm quite pleased, actually! Anyway, I hope people are still pleased to see the end of Hanna after it took me SO LONG to get it finished, and I certainly hope that you all enjoyed this ridiculously long series. Hooray! 
> 
> Does anyone remember the judgemental mops? :D Ahh, he good old days.


End file.
